just throw in as much crap as you can so it appeals to everyone

Watched the Dum­bo (2019) re­make, di­rect­ed by the guy who used to be good 20–30 years ago and has lost his mojo, and writ­ten by the guy who also wrote three Trans­form­ers films.

The orig­i­nal Dum­bo (1941) was a sim­ple sto­ry told from the an­i­mals’ point of view. This re­make adds too many hu­man char­ac­ters and re­tires all talk­ing an­i­mals (some of them do ap­pear as cameo, but with­out con­text in the film). Most peo­ple act fine, ex­cept for the kids who fail to be the emo­tion­al dri­ve of the hu­man side of the story. 

The film is just two hours of too many cooks in the kitchen with lit­tle Dum­bo, who is great when he’s on screen.

The orig­i­nal sto­ry was only about an hour, so they added a lot more. The film rush­es through the orig­i­nal part in the first half while over­crowd­ed by hu­man char­ac­ters, and every scene be­comes a check­box that does not have enough emotion. 

I see the biggest of­fence from how they screwed up the fa­mous Pink Ele­phant scene.

The sec­ond half in­volves a cor­po­rate bad guy played by Michael Keaton (his char­ac­ter is ex­act­ly like that seen in the Robo­cop re­make). And the lat­ter half of the film plays out ex­act­ly how a sto­ry with cliché cor­po­rate bad guy typ­i­cal­ly does, and be­comes in­suf­fer­able to get through. 

Did they think the orig­i­nal Dum­bo missed the mark be­cause it didn’t have that element?

Also, the added run­time re­sults in more flights and mom-son re­unions. These scenes in the orig­i­nal had an emo­tion­al im­pact be­cause there were few. Things like this re­al­ly make it clear that the screen­writer only knows how to fill time but not how to tight­en his script.

In the end, Dum­bo was an­oth­er ex­am­ple of point­less Dis­ney live ac­tion remake. 

Re­mem­ber how they used to make a lot of straight-to-VHS se­quels with bla­tant 2 at the end? That’s what they’re do­ing now, and they are hop­ing that you have for­got­ten how good the orig­i­nals ac­tu­al­ly were. And they are most­ly right, judg­ing by how well these mick­ey mice* are doing. 

I do re­mem­ber, and give this film ⁴⁄₁₀.
 
 

* Mick­ey Mouse is an Eng­lish slang for an in­fe­ri­or copy­cat, or fake prod­uct. Dis­ney does make Mick­ey Mouse, not just literally.

—toshi oma­gari

Flom­mist Toshi Oma­gari fights many things, most re­cent of which is the auto-cor­rec­tion of his ti­tle to florist. Copy­right © 2019 Toshi Omagari.

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