Dumbo (2019)
(Disney+ Streaming, December 2020) Et tu, Burton? What dubious privilege it is to see the brightest minds of our generation enslaved in service of The Mouse’s insatiable pursuit of profit, pilfering its back catalogue for inspiration as if originality was blasphemous. The latest victim is Tim Burton, whose “imagination” (as falsely claimed in the trailer) is servile to the recreation of Dumbo’s familiar story. To be fair, it’s easy to understand what could attract him to such a project: the thought of recreating a 1920s circus in big-budget glory must have been irresistible, and playing into such a classic sandbox must have had its appeal. Part of Dumbo does work: the visual polish of the production is lovely, and there’s some occasional cuteness to the CGI Dumbo. The actors also do decent work (Michael Keaton and Danny Devito, in particular), but the heart of the film is missing – an overstuffed script takes away from the linear simplicity of what could have been, and it takes forever for the film to get somewhere interesting. I suppose there’s something meta-ironic (or something) in having the film explicitly talk about the commodification of wonder in search of ever-greater profit. Not that it worked – like many of the latest Disney live-action adaptations, Dumbo barely made any money considering the magnitude of the investment. Not that we’re any closer to an end to them – the end game is probably to offer a live-action equivalent to the entire animated catalogue on Disney+. It will keep going as long as Disney exists as a for-profit entity.