Disney kicks off another crop of live-action remakes of cartoon classics with “Dumbo.” Thankfully before slapping us with realistic singing lions and an indigo Will Smith later this year, the House of Mouse has begun with a normal, nontalking, nonmusical elephant. (OK, he still flies.)
For a story about an airborne pachyderm, director Tim Burton has done much to ground “Dumbo.” The character’s chatty animal pal Timothy Q. Mouse from the 1941 original is gone, replaced by two human children. And, in the wake of Ringling Bros. folding, the movie no longer portrays the circus as a place an elephant could find happiness — even a famous one.
Still, the plot is roughly the same as in the cartoon, but 45 minutes longer thanks to its new homo sapiens and some husky-voiced villainy provided by Michael Keaton. Dumbo, now in adorable CGI, is born into the Medici Bros. Circus to his mom, Mrs. Jumbo. But he’s not the perfect little baby elephant the attraction’s owner, Max (Danny DeVito), dreamed of. Dumbo’s got mammoth, floppy ears.
His first night onstage, the cruel, early-20th-century audience heckles the deformed newborn, throwing popcorn and laughing. Mrs. Jumbo freaks out like an enraged soccer mom, tears down the tent and is sold as punishment. While consoling the motherless elephant, the kids, Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins), discover his special skill: If he snorts a feather up his trunk, Dumbo becomes American Ear-lines. Soar onstage, the children think, and Max will surely buy back the momma elephant. Tusk tusk, so naive.
“Dumbo” was a risky proposition for Burton, who heretofore has botched all of his major remakes. He let Johnny Depp do a surely regrettable Michael Jackson impression in 2005’s “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and had NRA president Charlton Heston, playing a chimp, give a campy speech about how awesome guns are in 2001’s “Planet of the Apes.” He’s toned it down here, to his credit. Burton ably makes his mark without slashing Disney’s canvas with a razor blade.
The director includes all the right parts of the original “Dumbo” — the iconic song “Baby Mine,” the elephant jetting off a burning building — and discards the trash. Dumbo no longer gets wasted on Champagne and hallucinates pink elephants on parade, and the racially offensive crows have been axed. It’s the director’s best work since “Sweeney Todd” and is highly reminiscent of his fun “Big Fish.”
Are the human characters as developed as they could be? Eh. We learn that Milly and Joe’s mom recently died, and their trick-riding dad (Colin Farrell) has just returned from World War I, missing an arm. Keaton’s Coney Island circus owner V.A. Vandevere is plainly evil, while Eva Green’s aerialist Colette walks the uptight-rope. And Danny DeVito gives another fabulous turn as Danny DeVito.
But none of that matters much. Kids aren’t showing up to applaud the star of “Birdman,” they’ve come to fall in love with a tiny, bird-like elephant. Those flight sequences — first suspenseful, then euphoric — take you back to the classic “Dumbo” as much as they do to classic Burton.