Dumbo (1941)

Dumbo (1941)

Following Pinocchio and Fantasia, Walt Disney brought us the great animated feature, Dumbo. One of my favorite Disney movies of all time btw.

Non-Spoiler brief review:

Dumbo, who is born at the beginning of the movie, is a baby circus elephant. Part comedy, part drama, Dumbo centers on a poor baby elephant, who is ridiculed for his large ears. Because of his deformity, the other elephants ostracize him and through his struggles (and with the help of a close mouse friend), he finds his way through this big world.

For Parents:

This movie is very kid-friendly, in my opinion. There are many excellent themes, including overcoming ridicule from others and finding ways to beat the odds and the obstacles of life in general. As far as vices go, Dumbo and his mouse friend accidentally get drunk from a bottle of alcohol that falls into a water bucket that they drink from. There’s also smoking, which is to be expected in most films from the era.

Detailed review, with some spoilers:

I don’t know exactly where I would put Dumbo on my list of favorite animated Disney movies, but it would definitely be up there. It’s one of the shortest feature films at only 64 minutes, so the film goes by quickly. Walt Disney created a great plot that really doesn’t need any more run time to tell a wonderful story about a poor young elephant whose only crime was being born with big ears. This movie does an excellent job of showing kids how being different, or having something that may initially look like a disadvantage, can often be overcome and turned into something positive.

Not to sound like a broken record for saying this in yet another review, but I will once again say that the animation and colors created for this movie are impeccable. When watching these great animated features, you are basically watching a master’s course in hand drawn, 2D animation. Animation was called the “illusion of life” in the great book by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, “Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life”. The people working in the Disney animation studios in those early days were creating some of the fundamental principles of animation that are still used as the standard of 2D and 3D animation to this day. So, when you watch this movie, I encourage you to take in the colors, take in the characters’ movements, and you can hopefully appreciate the hours upon hours of work that went into making these animated films not just great stories, but true works of art. Can you tell I love watching good animation?

Back to the story. The plot starts us off in Florida, where a musical intro shows a group of storks delivering baby animals to their mothers. Well, one elephant named Mrs. Jumbo does not get her expected newborn. A stork discovers this mistake and eventually delivers him to his mother. At this point, we meet her new baby, whom she names Jumbo Jr. However, as his giant ears are revealed, there is a group of gossipy elephant ladies who ridicule the poor baby and mockingly name him “Dumbo”. Unfortunately, for Dumbo, the name sticks for the rest of the movie.

As we move on, if you watched the last movie I reviewed, The Reluctant Dragon, we were introduced to a charming lady who was voicing a train sound for an upcoming animated movie. That movie was Dumbo, and now we see the finished scene. Pretty cool connection! As the circus train continues on its journey, and the circus animals go through their paces, the circus members further ridicule poor Dumbo. His mom tries to protect him, but in the process, goes a bit crazy and is put into solitary confinement as punishment. Meanwhile the gossipy elephant ladies aren’t making life easy for the new kid in town. That’s when we meet Timothy the mouse, a snazzy, smart mouse with a top hat who has pity on dumbo and wants to help him in his plight.

From here, we reach a point where the Master of Ceremonies for the circus has come up with an idea to make a huge pyramid with his elephants. He’s decided on what he wants to do but hasn’t figured out exactly how to do it yet. Our mouse friend, Timothy, overhears this plan and makes a plan of his own. As the Master of Ceremonies sleeps, the mouse goes into his ear and, in a haunting voice, tells him that he should use Dumbo as the finale of his great new act. The Master of Ceremonies wakes up yelling, “Dumbo! Dumbo!”

For the next show, Dumbo tries to go perform his part, but he gets cold feet, and in the process, everything falls apart. The other elephants fall everywhere and destroy the entire tent. This, of course, ends poorly for Dumbo. He is made to be an elephant clown as a consequence.

In the next sequence, we see the other clowns going crazy and making fun of Dumbo in their act. They make him jump from a tall tower into a bucket of water. This goes over well with the audience, and the clowns decide that they want to get a pay raise and make Dumbo jump from an even taller tower next time. Of course, we learn this as the mouse secretly watches the clowns in their tent. Which, by the way, is a great sequence to watch because it shows shadows of the clowns – some pretty cool animation!

One of the clowns drops a bottle of some sort of alcoholic beverage into a tub of water after their plotting session. As Timothy struggles to help Dumbo get his confidence back, he asks him to get a drink of water. Dumbo comes back looking woozy. The mouse dives in to take a drink for himself and gets drunk. The next thing you know, we go into perhaps the oddest sequence in this film. It seems to be some sort of hallucination or deep sleep that Dumbo and his friend fall into. There is some pretty masterful animation, including elephants of various colors dancing, singing, and playing instruments. To say the least, this is quite the trippy sequence and goes on for a pretty long time compared to the total run time of the movie.

After this crazy sequence, we find Dumbo and his mouse friend are sleeping. We also see a group of black crows hanging out and watching Dumbo and Timothy. Everything looks pretty normal at first glance. It seems like just another morning at the circus. That is, until the crows go over to Timothy and ask him if he realizes that he and Dumbo are sleeping up in a tree. At first, Timothy vehemently denies this and can’t figure out what the crows are talking about until he finally looks down and sees that they are actually in a tree. Almost immediately, he and Dumbo fall out of the tree. The whole time, the crows are basically making fun of them and having a good laugh at their expense. Timothy just can’t figure out how he and Dumbo got into the tree until the leader of the crows suggests that perhaps Dumbo got into the tree by flying. The mouse agrees and believes that this is exactly what happened. Now, how can he get Dumbo to believe this as well? The leader of the crows helps out by plucking a feather and helps convience Dumbo it will help him fly basically.

Now the only thing left to do is to take Dumbo for a test flight. The mouse and the crows finally persuade Dumbo to jump off a ledge and, as they predicted, Dumbo actually does start flying. Now, for the next circus performance, the clowns have made an extremely high platform for Dumbo to jump off and land in the mush again. They are unaware of the events that have just taken place. So Dumbo jumps and, at the very end, starts flying and steals the show. He has his revenge as he flies around, making the Master of Ceremonies fall into all kinds of silly ways.

Dumbo becomes the new circus darling. As the movie closes, we are shown newspaper clippings praising the new great world pheonom – the flying elephant. We also get one last look at the circus train. At the tail end of the long train, there is a comfortable private car for Dumbo’s mother. Dumbo also has his own private car, and we get to watch Dumbo fly one last time as he comes to see his mother. A happy ending to a great movie.

Bottom line: My overall rating for this movie is a 9. It’s a winner in plot, story, and animation. In my opinion, there are no boring parts in this movie. Actually, for being a very short movie, there are still a few great moments where we get to take a break from the action and just enjoy the scenery. For example, we get to watch the animals sleeping as they travel through the night in one non-action scene. The music throughout the movie is wonderful as well.

The trippy elephant dream scene is odd for sure, but it’s by design, and I can tell the animators probably had a blast creating that scene. The crows that mock Dumbo at first turn out to be some of Dumbo’s biggest friends and allies. The true heroes of the movie are Dumbo and his mouse friend, Timothy. Perhaps a take-away question we can ask is, “Who is someone we can help soar in their life?!”

This film can be bought on Blu-Ray here and rented or streamed on platforms such as Amazon. There are also various DVD editions that can be purchased. It is currently available on Disney+ at the writing of this blog.

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