![]() It's not long before Dumbo's aerial skills attract the eye of big-time amusement park impresario VA Vandevere (Michael Keaton, in a Max Schreck wig and villainous pinstripes), who promptly buys out Medici and taps the baby elephant to star in his headline act alongside French trapeze artist Colette Marchant (Eva Green). These too-earnest kids are no substitute for erstwhile cartoon chatterbox Timothy Q Mouse, relegated to a wordless cameo here, but Dumbo himself is a minor animated marvel - rendered, by some permissive miracle, in just the right combination of photorealistic creepiness and cutesy appeal. Ostracised as a freak, Dumbo is befriended by Farrier's young children, Millie (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins), whose curiosity uncovers the elephant's uncharacteristic gift: given a feather to Hoover up, the little guy can do aerial laps of the big top. His star horse rider, Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell), has returned from the war minus a limb, a mischievous monkey is wreaking havoc with his personal effects, and his latest recruit, a female Asian elephant by the name of Jumbo, has just given birth to an unusually big-eared baby - dismissively nicknamed "Dumbo". ![]() It's here, while touring the nation's south, that a ramshackle circus lead by pint-sized ringmaster Max Medici (Danny DeVito) has fallen on hard times. In other words, it's prime material for the director of this week's new Dumbo, Tim Burton: a man whose own career has variously tangled with the Disney machine - from his notoriously being fired by the studio's animation department, to helping inaugurate their present remake cycle with the billion-dollar-grossing Alice in Wonderland (2010).īurton's live action, CGI-enhanced Dumbo expands upon the slender framework of the original, locating its events in the heady boom of post-World War I America - where the burgeoning possibilities of the emergent Jazz Age would attract two-bit hucksters and wild-eyed visionaries alike.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |