Tuesdays with Media: Dumbo

You had to know this one was coming, right?

Dumbo, released in 1941, was the fourth feature-length animated feature from Walt Disney.  Apparently, it was made on the cheap to make up for the financial bomb that was Fantasia; it's just over an hour long, which was short even back then, and the animation style is less detailed than previous films by the studio.  Even if the movie was meant to be filler, it did well-enough at the box office to keep the studio going (Dumbo was only the second film by Disney that actually made money).

The story is about a baby circus elephant with huge ears which cause him to be the source of ridicule, but later on grant him the ability to fly (the idea that something embarrassing is a secret power is an idea that Hollywood really went nuts with in the 80s and 90s).  The movie stood out for being fun, having good music, and a unique dream sequence shown in the video above.  Years later, a scene with crows (the leader of which is named "Jim" in the script) stands out as portraying negative racial stereotypes, though I think most people recognize it as a product of its time (the film is still highly-regarded to this day).

I loved this movie as a kid.  There's one scene, where Dumbo visits his mother where she's chained up (she was protecting Dumbo from an aggressive visitor) and she can only barely reach out with her trunk and cradle her baby for a single, heartfelt song.  I watched this movie a lot as a kid and this scene always made me bawl my eyes out.  Even now, just thinking about that scene makes me a bit misty-eyed.  This single scene is a great testament of what can be done with visual story-telling, as the song merely backs up what we're watching.

And since I loved this, of course I loved the super cheesy live-action show that was on the Disney Channel in the 80s, Dumbo's Circus.  Even as a kid, I could tell how many of the special effects were pulled off (even I didn't know what a "blue screen" was, I could see when one was being used), but that didn't mean I didn't love it (although, I did wonder where Timothy Q. Mouse was).

Even though I haven't watched this movie in years, I remember it fondly.  This film helped to teach me at an early age that experiencing sadness isn't a horrible thing, especially in our stories.  Yes, it has a happy ending, but one that it earned by having our characters suffer, and we, the audience, feel everything they do. Basically, it's just good story telling.  If you can stand a few tears, along with grins, give this one another go.

Dumbo is distributed by Walt Disney Pictures.