At the time of writing, my wife and I have just returned from a longish trip to Turkey so this is just some light watching while we recover. No one can fail to know about Dumbo the Flying Elephant but I don’t believe I’ve ever watched the original animated film. Still from what I know this update is very different and though it closely tracks the familiar arc of animal rescue genre, I think it may actually be superior to the more simplistic original.

Cowboy performer Holt Farrier returns to his circus and his two children after the First World War with one hand amputated and his wife dead from the Spanish flu. Circus owner Max Medici hopes to turn things around with a pregnant Asian elephant that he has just acquired and assigns Holt to be her caretaker but the baby is born with giant-sized deformed ears. Holt’s children Milly and Joe discover that the baby, named Dumbo, can fly but no one believes them and Medici sells Dumbo’s mother for causing trouble. But when Dumbo flies during a performance, news spreads and businessman V. A. Vandevere buys up the Medici circus, with Dumbo included, in order to make him the star performer of his new amusement park.

This is clearly a film aimed at children and is so safe and conventional that it’s hard to believe that it was directed by Tim Burton. The basic story is the familiar one of an animal victimized by evil humans only to be rescued by good ones. A welcome and timely update here is the acknowledgement that there is an inevitable cruelty in training animals to perform in circuses. The execution is competent enough though the character of Vandevere is needlessly and pointlessly cruel. As Milly points out, it’s seems like common sense that Dumbo would happily train and perform if only he were allowed to live with his mother but someone has to be the villain in this story in order for there to be some conflict.

Anyway there’s nothing much to say except that it’s decent enough at what it does without being anything truly special. I rather enjoyed the CGI used here to depict the amusement park as something that is not cartoonish but then not completely realistic here. I think that’s good art direction to not always try to go for photorealism. Taking out most of the animals and adding more human characters also helps makes it more modern. It may not be great cinema but it’s respectable enough piece of work that doesn’t feel too old-fashioned and is not a frame for frame remake of the original.