Thursday 12 March 2015

magic feather or remastered

While I have no reservations that Tim Burton’s filmmaking vision could not fail to limn an interesting version of the story, but I do wonder about the overall trend of meddling with the classics.
Some things are still royalty generators without repackaging them as a novelty to a new generation—as lore that was good enough to repeat was passed along from parents to offspring before Hollywood and pollsters, and I wonder why—in of all Disney’s extensive library, they are choosing to bootstrap Dumbo. This one, clocking in at just over an hour and one of the shortest features that the studio made, always struck me as vaguely off-putting what with the cruelty and the way people picked on Jumbo Junior, the later day controversy levied against the crows (the characters were both called “Jim Crow” in the script) as a racist depiction. Happily, I was relieved to learn that I had misremembered Mother Elephant’s rampage and incarceration—not being put down like Bambi’s mom, and make what you will about the way they discover Dumbo’s amazing power after an all-night bender and a visit from the Pink Elephants.