Dumbo Reviews

Dumbo for me is a mini- masterpiece, with beautiful animation, an inspiring message and the sweetest elephant on screen. Dumbo is an elephant born with big ears, but who cares? True beauty comes from within. Dumbo's mother was like Bambi's mother, wise and memorable, and like Dumbo, misunderstood. The song "Baby of Mine" is so sad, that I always cry when I see this film because of it, Casey Jnr is very rousing and having a good laugh during "Seen an Elephant Fly". In regard to the crows, I saw nothing racist about them, they are stereotypical yes in a sense but in a positive way. Timothy the mouse is also memorable, a bit like Dumbo's conscience in a sense. For me, the highlight was Dumbo's dream, with the elephants dancing(a bit unrealistic but very imaginative), with ballet-like incidental music towards the end. I found the song "Elephants on Parade" catchy and I love how trippy the whole sequence is. In conclusion, I rejoiced when Dumbo conquered his fears, when it looked impossible. Great idea, Disney, about the flying elephant, although Don Bluth used a similar idea 50 years later for Pebble and the Penguin. A beautiful film, 10/10 Bethany Cox

(OK) So nice little linnear tender straight Disney. The dreamy secuence ant the clown number are great...

It may not have the gargantuan production values of the prior films, but it substitutes something else in its absence: a gigantic heart. The way some people feel about The Lion King and its demonstration of parental love? That’s how I have always felt towards Dumbo. On some deeper level, I’ve always felt some kind of identification with that lovable little elephant toddler.

 

Cranked out as a way to recoup some of the money lost from the twin failures of the prior year, Dumbo was never intended to be a classic. The gambit worked, as only Dumbo and Snow White were financial successes during this era. While those other films are enormously ambitious, their scopes are roughly the size of DisneyLand, Dumbo scaled back to tell a simplistic fable about finding strength in that which makes us different, and how families come in all shapes and sizes.  

 

At barely over an hour, Dumbo packs enough heart and tenderness for several films, and this emotional honesty is equaled only by its charm. At twenty-eight, this movie can still easily make me cry as it did when I was a child. It just hits some very specific nerves, and imprinted upon my psyche at a very early age. This is the only Golden Era film that I do not remember viewing for the first time, it has always been.

 

Dumbo tells the story of Mrs. Jumbo, a single mother and it is never explained what happened to her husband, who yearns to be a mother. When a Stork finally drops off a bundle of joy, after a lonely night in which she heartbreakingly watches as every other paired off animal couple gets a newborn (or several), she’s delighted. She names the baby Jumbo Jr., but it isn’t long before his deformity, a pair of comically large ears, is revealed. The other elephants are cruel to him, but the human are worse. In a fit of rage, his mother attacks an unruly brat who was making fun of him, causing her to get sent to the “mad house,” and disrupting their familial unit. With no one left to care for him, Dumbo eventually befriends a showboating mouse and a group of crows, learning to embrace his unique nature and turn it into his greatest strength.

 

I cannot oversell the amount of primal power this film has given me over the years. I can remember very vividly being talked about and treated differently for my innate nature by relatives, and Mrs. Jumbo’s maternal protectiveness reminded me a lot of my own mother’s. I just wanted to hug Dumbo, tell him that I understood his sadness and isolation. This is the power of the film. It reaches into those memories and feelings, and it acts as a soothing tonic for those ugly emotions.

 

Snow White and Pinocchio had fantastic ensembles, and Dumbo is another proud addition to that tradition. There’s the lovable Dumbo, a mute creation who reacts like a silent movie clown. Timothy Q. Mouse a fast-talking, good-hearted friend who does everything in his power to make Dumbo feel happy again, reunite with his mother, and embrace his individuality. A group of gossipy elephants (led by Disney perennial Verna Felton in her first role with the company, she also voices Mrs. Jumbo), the blow-hard Ringmaster, Mr. Stock (voiced by another Disney perennial, Sterling Holloway), and the group of crows (led by Cliff Edwards, a Disney mainstay during the 30s and 40s).

 

The crows are controversial nowadays, and I’m not entirely sure I can completely write them off as racist caricatures. Voiced by the Hall Johnson Choir, who also provided the vaudevillian routines and dance moves the animators used for reference, the crows are a reminder of what used to pass as socially acceptable, but they’re also surrogate fathers to Dumbo. Their song is filled with intricate word-play and puns, they endowed Dumbo with the confidence to learn to fly. A mainstream film that positioned black characters as heroes during this era is exceptionally rare, and I suppose I lean harder on taking the victories where you can get them.  

 

I mentioned earlier that Dumbo was also an examination of maternal love. The crux of the film is “Baby Mine,” the reunion scene between Dumbo and his mother. While she is still locked up, she sticks her trunk between the bars, loving caressing him before cradling him. It’s beautiful moment in which their bond overcomes all obstacles. There’s more emotion in this scene than in any of the prior films. In fact, there may be no more emotional and tear-inducing scene for me in any other Disney film. It still makes me cry to this very day. But their connection, and the heart string pulling, was in play long before this scene. An earlier one where Dumbo plays in a bubble bath, his mother looks at him adoringly, before they play a game of hide-and-seek.

 

Disney was smart to put a majority of the emphasis on the narrative, and save the big-money animation for a few moments. “Pink Elephants on Parade” follows immediately after “Baby Mine,” and is as playful and inventive as that prior scene was heartfelt and touching. Surrealism first appeared in Fantasia, and Dumbo continues that trend as a drunk Dumbo blows bubbles that turn into hallucinatory elephants. They shape-shift and contort into all manner of strange objects. It’s an enchanting moment, and a nice reprieve from the heartache of so much of the film. It’s never as dark or disturbing as Pinocchio, but far more realistic in its depictions of the torment of growing up.

 

Charmingly unpretentious, Dumbo is economic story-telling done right. Instead of serving up leftover materials of what had worked previously, Disney strove to tell a good story remarkably well. Mission accomplished on that front. But it’s the genuine warmth, humor, and empathy of social pariahs, the variety of family units on display, and the uplift (both literal and emotional) that make it an unadorned classic. All Dumbo has to offer you is its immense heart, and that is more than enough. 

This is the very first movie I have shown to my daughter, I have seen it countless times when she was just 2 or 3 years old and I thought it was really time to write a review for this feature. The funny thing about this production is that, even though 'Pinocchio' and 'Fantasia' were both critically heralded, they were also some really ambitious projects that had cost Disney a lot and they didn't turn out to be some huge box-office success like 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'. So, back then, they decided to come up with something smaller and cheaper and, surprisingly, it turned out to be a hit. To be honest, I think that the scope was too limited to make it one of my favorites and, with a running time of barely 60 minutes, and the fact that Timothy Q. Mouse was just a recycled version of Jiminy Cricket, it did feel a little bit cheap. And yet, this Dumbo character was really awesome. Indeed, it showed some guts to have a title character who didn’t say a word during the whole thing and there were a couple of scenes involving him and his mother that were just amazing and quite heartbreaking to behold. Also, you won't see any time soon in a Disney feature an infant getting drunk and hallucinating afterwards and a bunch of black crowns smoking some huge cigars. On top of that, they gave us their weirdest (but, in my opinion, also one of their most awesome) musical sequence with the legendary 'pink elephants on parade'. Anyway, to conclude, even though it might not be one of the best productions from Disney, it is still really charming and definitely worth a look.

Same with Pinocchio, Dumbo was made pretty much between the start and the middle of World War II so even making it was a bit of a gamble but despite that, they still went ahead with it and created a film with a fantastic story on friendship, drama and courage that has a powerful message. In a way, Dumbo is like an original film adaptation to The Hunchback Of Notre Dame because they are both based on a character with deformity but who have big hearts too. The Elephant Man is another film that is linked with both of those films. I absolutely love films like them. Dumbo is perhaps the first heartbreaking Disney film that will make you cry with the drama especially in the "Baby Mine song and it is also a very heartwarming and feel-good film that will make you shed a tear with joy whilst you're watching it.


The story follows circus whose animals are expecting new born offspring of their species. There are lions, elephants, hippos, zebras etc. The story starts with a group of female elephants. All of them have had their babies except Mrs. Jumbo. One day, her baby elephant arrives and at first it appears to be a normal baby elephant but after a sudden unexpected sneeze the baby's ears were absolutely enormous. They were almost bigger than his whole body. Instead of a name like "Jumbo Jr." most of the elephants except Mrs. Jumbo decided to call the baby "Dumbo" which is really cold and mean. As Dumbo was growing up in the circus, he began to think that his ears would make his life be nowhere. Dumbo doesn't speak at all but by seeing body language and the way he is I can tell how he feels. That changes when he meets Timothy the Mouse who is not only a companion to Dumbo but also a mentor and a friend. The friendship between them two is a lot like Jiminy Cricket and Pinocchio's friendship. Timothy is a very loyal and kind mouse because he sticks with Dumbo every step of the way. There is a tragic moment in the film that becomes very heartbreaking but is beautifully filmed and written. That is during the "Baby Mine" song. That scene is one of the most emotional things that I have ever seen. After this tragedy that happens, Dumbo meets four birds who think that he could fly with his large wings. He attempts it and does it. He goes back to the circus and succeeds. So, Dumbo figures that his ears weren't a disease to him but they were a gift or a blessing.


The film was designed as an economical feature to help generate income for the Disney studio after the financial failures of Pinocchio and Fantasia in 1940. The studio income was negatively impacted due to the war. When Dumbo went into production in 1941, supervising director Ben Sharpsteen was given orders to keep the film simple and inexpensive. As a result, Dumbo lacks the lavish detail of the previous Disney Classics (Fantasia, Pinocchio and Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs): character designs are simpler, background paintings are less detailed and a number of held cels (or frames) were used in the character animation.


Overall, Dumbo is a both heartbreaking and heartwarming Disney Classic that will live for eternity! Perhaps not as sophisticated as Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs or Pinocchio but still an awesome classic! It is magical, inspiring and a well-filmed picture that I absolutely love and appreciate for what it is.

Older Disney movies are still just as good as I remember them being when I saw them as a child. Dumbo is one of my favourites---who couldn't love this movie about a baby elephant with gigantic ears, who is ridiculed by everyone except his mother and his best friend, a mouse?

Dumbo isn't even his given name---it's a nickname given by one of the other elephants while they are making fun of him. This is a sweet movie, with a touching scene --- Dumbo and his mother together while "Baby Mine" is being sung.

My daughter, being introduced to the movie for the first time, loves the "Elephants on Parade" sequence. This is a movie that stands the test of time, and is well loved by everyone who sees it.