Movie Trailers and such

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Dumbo -- 1941 -- G

This is a short little film from Disney's earlier days that would never get made today. Why? It contains a lot of smoking and one drunk elephant. But let's move past that into the film itself.

This is actually a really sweet tale about a baby elephant with big ears. He is rejected by his kind, loses his mother who tries to protect him, and is turned into the laughing stock of the circus. Dumbo is developed very thoroughly even though he never speaks a word, and you really feel for this little guy. He ironically befriends a mouse who becomes the equivalent of his voice from then on.

Bad things go to worse until he ends up drunk on champagne and we begin one of the trippiest sequences in film history: "Pink Elephants on Parade." Fantastic imagery here, but the rest of the film is simple and doesn't really need much else. It's short but complete.

Excellent offering from Disney before he sold out to make cute little animal cartoons later in his career.

No comments:

Post a Comment