filM

“i really didn’t exepct you to eat that bird.”

Dumbo and dumber

The decline of Tim Burton continues with Dumbo, his wasteful remake of the classic animated movie that amounts to a big nothing, for kids and adults alike.

The original Dumbo clocked in at just over an hour, while this one lasts for nearly two hours that feel like 40. Yes, the running time has been padded but, no, it’s not padded with anything that registers as beneficial. A bunch of unnecessary subplots and added characters take away time from the title character, an admittedly cute CGI achievement.

There are no talking animals in this movie, so scratch Timothy the mouse, the singing crows and the lullaby from Mama elephant off your list of expectations. The mouse—who makes a brief appearance as a caged mouse wearing a hat—is replaced by the requisite precocious children, one of them played by Thandie Newton’s daughter. Sorry, Thandie Newton’s daughter, but you can’t act and shouldn’t act and need to consider another profession that requires you not to act.

Colin Farrell appears as Holt, the precocious children’s dad, back from World War I with one arm, and his wife died of the flu while traveling with the circus. The circus is led by Max Medici (a blustery Danny DeVito), who has purchased a cheap, pregnant elephant. He wants Holt to be the keeper of his elephants, a comedown from his previous gig as a circus cowboy. Farrell, like most of the humans in this movie, seems lost.

V.A. Vandevere, the villain of the film, played by Michael Keaton, purchases Dumbo and plans to make him a main attraction at his Dreamland, which has a strong resemblance to Disneyland. So, in a way, Vandevere is modeled after Walt Disney and is portrayed as an evil megalomaniac. So, in essence, Burton gets away with indirectly portraying Walt Disney as a bit of a greedy monster. I’m not saying this is anything inaccurate, but it’s a little odd to see in an actual Disney movie.

As for Keaton, he’s at his sneering worst in this movie, as if he was just put in front of the camera and told to act persnickety. It’s a shame, because seeing the man who was Batman in a movie by the guy who directed Batman certainly projected as something that could be fun. Alas, it is not. Keaton just seems as if he’s always on the brink of recreating his “You wanna get nuts … let’s get nuts!” scene from Batman, which was one of the worst parts of that movie.

In the original, Dumbo flew in only a couple of scenes for just a few seconds. Here, he has multiple flying scenes, which lessens the magic of the moments. Regrettably, the scene in the original where Dumbo gets wasted and sees pink elephants is replaced by a lame bubble show that is an homage to the Dumbo drunk scene, and a dull homage at that.

As much as I did like the original, I’ve always taken issue with the notion that anybody would give Dumbo a bunch of shit for having big ears. All elephants have big ears, do they not? The premise worked in a one-hour cartoon for kids but falls flat in a big budget live-action movie with real people walking around. The morality lesson at the core just doesn’t ring right with actual humans acting it out. It feels corny.

Burton used to churn out one classic after another. His last great movie was 2007’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, and his career was severely tainted with his other Disney live action reboot, Alice in Wonderland.

Dumbo is actually worse than that Alice mess, and proof that Burton needs to get far away from the mouse and closer to the weirdos who inspired the first half of his career. Jesus, make another Pee Wee movie before you deface any further Disney properties. Ω

Dumbo 12345

2Alita: Battle Angel The first time I saw the actual character of Alita in previews (played, in motion captures, by Rosa Salazar), I found her super creepy with her big eyes and ghostly smile. After seeing her in 3D IMAX, I have to say, something about adding that third dimension makes her more visually accessible. The movie itself is rather absorbing for a while, a decent story about a more than 300-year-old android trying to fit into a dystopian society, along with having the dullest boyfriend in cinematic history (Keean Johnson). The convoluted plot has something to do with her amnesiac-self trying to remember her battle machine origins (interesting) and trying to become a killer roller derby superstar (not so interesting). This is a project that’s been on James Cameron’s plate for what seems like forever. I can’t remember the first time I saw him attached to the project, but I know it was a long time ago. Then, the whole Avatar thing happened, and Cameron the director got lost in Pandora speaking Navi and doing strange things with horse-like creatures. He went from directing Alita to contributing to its screenplay and production only.

2Captain Marvel It looks like somebody forgot to tell Brie Larson to have fun and let loose in Captain Marvel. Her turn as the title character, a.k.a. Carol Danvers, is one laced with lethargy and bizarre line deliveries. Samuel L. Jackson and an orange tabby seem to be in on the notion of being in escapist fare, but Larson is stiffer than Church the cat on the Creed’s front lawn after his unfortunate encounter with a speeding truck. (Say, is my excitement for the upcoming Pet Sematary reboot evident?) A similar problem plagued Larson in Kong: Skull Island. The Academy Award-winning actress seems to be in her wheelhouse when the budget is low, but seems miscast when the title of her movie is synonymous with blockbuster. She gives off a detached vibe, like she just doesn’t want to really be in the movie. It’s odd. Had the movie around her been really good, her seemingly bored disposition might’ve been forgiven, but Captain Marvel is also riddled with awful special effects and some haphazard storytelling. I went in hoping for a badass movie about Captain Marvel but found myself more intrigued by the subplot involving an up and coming, low-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent named Nick Fury, played by Jackson. Honestly, the de-aged Jackson in this movie, along with a returning Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg), who died in the first Avengers movie, are so good you wish they got their own film.

1The Dirt Jeff Tremaine, director of Jackass films, tries to deliver an actual narrative movie and bombs miserably with this lame biopic of Motley Crue. Based on the book written by members of the band, the film covers the band from formation through their career and makes a mess of the whole thing. For starters, Tommy Lee-lookalike Machine Gun Kelly delivers a bad performance as the iconic drummer, making him into more of a cartoon than he already is. Daniel Webber is an annoying prick as lead singer Vince Neil, who actually is an annoying prick in real life, too, so I guess he gets a pass. Douglas Booth renders bassist Nikki Sixx boring, while Iwan Rheon is the closest thing to any fun as the old, grumpy guitarist Mick Mars. I confess, I’ve never liked the band, and I find their music amateurish and shitty, so liking a movie about them might be a stretch. Still, we are talking some bad wig acting here, and nothing revelatory whatsoever about the group. They had groupies. They did drugs, blah, blah, blah. I never thought I’d see a rock biopic that annoyed me more than Bohemian Rhapsody, but here you go. (Streaming on Netflix.) 3 The Highwaymen Kevin Costner and Woody Harrelson play Frank Hamer and Maney Gault, two former Texas Marshals who come out of retirement to help hunt and kill the infamous Bonnie and Clyde. John Lee Hancock (The Blind Side) directs from a script by John Fusco that basically amounts to a road movie as Hamer and Gault deal with each other’s aging foibles as they hunt down two of the most notorious criminals in American history. As road movies go, it’s a pretty good one, with Costner playing the crustier guy to Harrelson’s quirkier guy. The movie stands as a decent companion piece to the ’67 Arthur Penn classic Bonnie and Clyde starring Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway. In fact, I watched that one directly after this, and they fit together quite nicely. Bonnie and Clyde make brief, but memorable, appearances in this one, with Costner and Harrelson getting the vast majority of screen time. Hamer and Gault make for an interesting story about how, sometimes, you just have to go old school. (Streaming on Netflix.)

3Never Grow Old Emile Hirsch and John Cusack, two actor’s whose careers have seen better times, star in this dark Western about a religious town that’s visited by the devil. The devil would be Dutch Albert (Cusack), a sleazy gunslinger businessman who arrives in an old frontier town that has outlawed liquor and promptly opens a saloon. The mayhem that follows him has a body count, and the local undertaker, Patrick (Hirsch), starts making a fine profit off of all the kills. Feeling conflicted over the fact that more money for his family also means a lot of people and friends dying, Patrick starts having thoughts about rising up against Dutch, but many will die before Patrick works up the gumption to make a move. Both actors are very good here, with Cusack delivering his best work since his excellent turn in Love & Mercy. He’s played bad guys before, but this guy is really bad, and Cusack seizes the opportunity to let the evil out. Hirsch is decent as the good guy who needs to buck up and do the right thing. (Available for rent on iTunes and Amazon.com during a limited theatrical release.)

4Us Oh, those evil doppelgangers and their wonderful place in horror lore. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Twin Peaks, The Thing and now Us, Jordan Peele’s extremely creepy follow up to Get Out. The film starts with a quote about America having many miles of tunnels underneath its surface, then a quick flashback shot of a C.H.U.D. videotape next to a VCR. A TV plays an advertisement for Hands Across America, and you already have all sorts of subtext before anything even really happens. When a young girl (Madison Curry) in the same ’80s flashback drifts away from her father at an amusement park and finds herself in a darkened hall of mirrors, Peele immediately states that he’s not playing around with this movie. Prepare to be scared, disturbed and uncomfortable in a good way. The film then jumps to the present day, where Adelaide and Gabe (Lupita Nyong’o and Winston Duke) are taking their children, Zora and Jason (Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex) to the beach. It’s the same beach we saw in the flashback and, much to her chagrin, Adelaide was that young girl who ventured into that hall of mirrors. She’s not happy about revisiting the Santa Cruz pier, but the husband and kids really want to, so she takes one for the team. Us has a larger scope than I was expecting and qualifies as one of the better apocalypse movies I’ve ever seen. No question, writer-director Peele has been gobbling up zombie, slasher and isolation horror movies all of his life, and their influences play a significant part in his vision. The movie is a mind-bender, but it’s also an efficient, bare-knuckled horror-thriller. In short, it’s the whole package as far as horror movies go.