Looking for a revival of a good old classic? Don't watch Dumbo

A new trend among the Disney film industry is remaking its old classics into newer live action movies. With younger kids, who haven’t grown up watching Aladdin on VHS like Millenials and Generation Z-ers, this is their bread and butter. However, as a person that is more familiar and holds old Disney classics to a favorable standard, this trend has a huge possibility of disappointing a lot of people.

Now this by no means is a ‘new’ thing, but it has been picking up in frequency since “The Beauty and the Beast” movie in 2017. However, 2019 has an acute increase in live-action films. And by no mean is this a bad thing, but live actions have a high possibility of being over-hyped, cringe-worthy and just overall unwatchable. Just recently, the live action movie of Dumbo was released. Unfortunately, I have to say that I was disappointed. The movie was directed by Tim Burton, who is no stranger to directing movies that charm the socks off of children. He’s directed movies like “The Corpse Bride”, Alice in Wonderland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He’s always had this dark underlying tone in most of his movies that might go over the head of most children, but could definitely stick with older people. But in Dumbo, you almost couldn’t tell that this was directed by Tim Burton. The darkest that it went was that this was near time period of the First World War and then after that, he left that part of the story unhinged and went on with the rest of the plot.

For some reason, the theme of Dumbo went right over Tim Burton’s head and he surrounded the theme around other characters instead of the main character. The theme of the movie was to believe in yourself and anything can happen--standard Disney stuff. In the movie, however, the characters almost bent the theme to match another theme which was believe in your children, it just might surprise you. The fact of the matter is that the plot went nowhere. The kids serve a purpose, but not as big as a purpose as the film made it out to be. What filmmakers need to be aware of is that CGI does not always work well and it can end up being horribly overdone.

People who might have found the movie a bit more enjoyable might use the excuse that this is a child's movies and it shouldn’t be treated as anything more than that. That excuse will not work for this movie or any movie matter of fact. There have been a handful of movies that were made for a younger audience and it turned out to be phenomenal by any standards. Although, Tim Burton really wasn’t aiming to impress other ages and strictly meant to stay with the younger kids that this one. In the end, that might be a mistake. It’s not exactly the kids that are buying their own tickets. if I were younger I might have found this movie quite impressive, so no one can say this was a failure.

I wouldn’t recommend that anyone who wants to go see this movie by themselves. It doesn’t do a good job of maintaining your attention, however, if you were babysitting and had no way to get out of it I can’t say that it would be the worst movie to see with your little sister. Definitely wasn’t worth the hype. Nevertheless, enjoy at your own caution.