Tim Burton is a genius when he's involved with a project that requires extraordinary vision and a twisted thinking to storytelling. Examples include "Edward Scissorhands," "Mars Attacks!," "Beetlejuice" and "Alice in Wonderland." The director took such a complicated and contorted approach in each that all the movies are memorably entertaining.
It's when Burton tries to bring his particular brand of moviemaking to a project that doesn't benefit from his vision that the end product becomes a mangled mess, such as with his latest project, "Dumbo," the live-acting version of the 1941 animated Disney classic.
Burton has taken a beautiful story of how no one should accept what makes them different to be negative just because others say so. The original film showed how the little elephant with floppy ears came to realize he was not a misfit through the support of his family and a close friend. The story was written decades ago but remains just as legitimate in today's era of so much bullying.
Instead of embracing the story, Burton opted to transform "Dumbo" into an over-the-top examination of greed through what comes across through a demented version of Disneyland. There are so many threads that nothing emerges as being the central core.
Circus owner Max Medici (Danny DeVito) is watching his traveling show limping along to what appears to be a sad ending. His luck changes when an elephant he buys gives birth. But what could be the new main attraction proves to be an embarrassment to Medici because Dumbo has been born with giant ears. He hopes former circus star Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell), who returns home from the war minus a limb, and his children Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins), can turn the newborn elephant into a win for the struggling circus.
The discovery Dumbo can fly catches the attention of entrepreneur V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton), who recruits the elephant and all the other members of Medici's circus to be part of a new massive theme park he has built. This new beginning for the circus group turns dark.
At the top of the list of the monumental mistakes Burton and screenwriter Ehren Kruger ("Ghost in the Shell") make is changing the film from one where the animals speak to focusing on the human characters. They should have taken a look at the wonderful job Jon Favreau did with making a live-action version of the Disney animated offering of "The Jungle Book." The animation to create Dumbo is done so well that all the circus animals could have been created via computers to make a far more interesting film.
At least the performances by computer-generated talking animals couldn't be any worse than the human actors. The two children who befriend Dumbo show no emotion, whether seeing their injured father come home from the war or seeing an elephant fly. Farrell sleepwalks through his role as the former circus superstar trying to adapt to life at home.
And, it is a contest between DeVito and Keaton as to which can chew up more scenery than the other. Keaton's supposed to be a master showman, but he's reduced to mugging and committing weird acts of mayhem just to move the plot along.
One clue to when a plot has trouble is when the entire movie can come to a calm ending with one rational decision. Kruger's script hits one of those moments with Dumbo and his mother, but instead of doing the logical thing, an irrational decision keeps the film from ending 45 minutes early.
Burton shows no consistency with "Dumbo" as to whether he wanted to make a film based in reality or one that embraced fantasy. He stayed away from talking animals but sets up a theme park world that has technology not available when construction would have started more than 100 years ago.
Then there is a bizarre sequence where giant pink bubbles are used to create the pack of pachyderms for the "Elephants on Parade" number. The technology to create the bubbly images in front of a live audience doesn't exist today, let alone a century ago.
At least the music by Burton's longtime collaborator, Danny Elfman, is a perfectly mixed soundtrack of music from the original film with new material. Touches of "Casey Junior" and "Baby Mine" are nice additions.
