Original release date: October 31, 1941 (premiered in New York City on October 23)

Rating: G. “Contains tobacco depictions. It may contain outdated cultural depictions.”

Length: 1 hour, 4 minutes

Background: “Dumbo” is a pretty well-known film in the Disney library, having spawned remakes, theme park rides, and an unfortunate nickname for people with big ears.

At just over an hour, it is one of the shortest full-length animated films by Disney. Originally planned as a short, Walt noticed there just had to be more and stretched it into a feature film. It is preserved in the National Film Registry, so apparently Walt knew what he was doing.

A random factoid: it was released alongside “Alice in Wonderland” as the first Disney animated films on home video, both being released on VHS and Betamax. It has been released seemingly 500 times since on various formats.

It was nominated for two Academy Awards and brought one home for sound editing.

The movie spawned one of the first shows on the new Disney Channel in the 1980s, the live-action/puppet hybrid show “Dumbo’s Circus.” I remember loving the show as a kid. A 2019 live-action film adaptation was also released.

Unlike a lot of the popular Disney films, Dumbo hasn’t had much of an impact on the video game world outside of appearing in the “Kingdom Hearts” series.

However, Dumbo has had a huge impact at Disney parks around the world. Dumbo the Flying Elephant – better known as “the Dumbo ride” to everyone ever – has been delighting guests at five Disney parks for decades. A Casey Jr. Circus Train attraction is at Disneyland and Disneyland Paris, while a Casey Jr.-themed splash area is at the Magic Kingdom in Florida.

Remember the buck teeth that Mickey grew in the last short reviewed, The Little Whirlwind? This is the last short with those. Easy come, easy go.

Review:

Following the then-standard title cards, the movie jumps right into a horrible hail and rainstorm, lightning crashing everywhere. This is where we meet the many flying storks, all carrying bundles of babies. That is how babies are made, right?

One stork in particular – Mr. Stork – is our focus. Mr. Stork is voiced by Sterling Holloway, also the original voice of Winnie the Pooh. As the storm passes, the animals and circus pieces are loaded up on Casey Jr., circus train extraordinaire. Of course many years later in 2020, we know many circus animals have been mistreated and maybe this isn’t cool, but it fit for quite a while.

Mr. Stork finally finds the train and, with it, Mrs. Jumbo. This is where we first meet our large-eared little elephant friend, christened Jumbo, Jr. by his mom. Unfortunately, that name doesn’t stick when her mean-spirited, gossipy friends see his enormous ears. “Jumbo? You mean Dumbo.” Rude.

Mrs. Jumbo nurtures her new baby despite the rudeness of her carmates. Casey Jr. crosses past a beautiful sunset, giving us our first look at the great bright color work the original animators did as well as the artists who brought it into the HD era.

The train stops and we get a scene of the poor elephants being put to work in the rain, having to do the work to put up the circus tents. Poor elephants. The elephant we grow to know as Dumbo does it with a smile, however.

After a circus parade with two many creepy clowns welcomes the crew to town, Dumbo gets a bath followed by some mockery by mean kids. The brings out some maternal rage by mama elephant, going after kids before being whipped – cultural moment! – and chained down by the circus team. She’s locked in a train car labelled “danger” and “mad elephant,” away from her child. Dumbo, meanwhile, is alone in the elephant tent with the mean old lady elephants. For the first time, he looks sad instead of happy.

This is when we meet Timothy Q. Mouse, noting there is nothing wrong with his ears. As Dumbo wanders off sad, Tim marches in to scare off the mean girl elephants – elephants are scared of mice, so go the stories – before going to find the little sad elephant.

After introducing himself to the sad elephant, Tim tells him that there’s a way to turn it all around. They just need an idea to make him the star of the show. Then it hits him – the climax!

We see the bigger, grown, mean elephants working together to do tricks, with Dumbo’s spot being jumping on a trampoline and then on time of their stack o’ elephants. Dumbo, full of nerves, stumbles over his ears, misses his mark and takes down the entire elephant mountain. Oops.

Dumbo’s new act is having his face painted like a clown. He’s up in a burning building as the menagerie of creepy clowns run around doing annoying clown things instead of rescuing him. Dumbo just wants to get down, but the clowns are too busy being annoying. They finally set up a trampoline for him to jump down into, but it turns out to just be covering a tub of whipped cream. Of course.

Timothy tries to talk up Dumbo, telling him he is a big hit. Dumbo isn’t into the inspirational speech, wiping away tears and looking as depressed as a toddler elephant can look. Tim does find the way to cheer him up, having scheduled an appointment to see his poor, locked up mom. They get together and Mrs. Jumbo sings the iconic “Baby Mine” as she rocks Dumbo in her trunk as it hangs out of the bars. Cue tears.

Meanwhile in the tent, the newly drunk clowns march off to beg the boss for a raise, accidentally knocking a bottle of their finest – or let’s be real, cheapest – bubbly into Dumbo’s water. Dumbo drinks as a cure for the hiccups, quickly becoming visibly drunk. Tim falls into the water and becomes drunk himself. Things are going off the rails quickly, folks.

The drunkenness leads to the most psychedelic part of the movie, the infamous “Pink Elephants on Parade” portion. Tim and Dumbo see pink elephants, marching with various band instruments, all around them. It’s very bright and the HD upgrade team did a great job making them even more bright than before. The elephants turn colors, grow polka dots and stripes, and go from cute to creepy to weird all in about two minutes. Don’t drink, kids.

Following the drunken party, we meet the black crows. Ah yes, the black crows. The crows are the center of controversy in the modern world of watching “Dumbo,” as many see them as African-American stereotypes. This is magnified by the leader of the crows, Dandy Crow, originally being named Jim Crow before filming. I can see it.

After singing “When I See An Elephant Fly” and mocking the elephant, the stereotypical birds offer a magic feather – just plucked out of the butt of the smallest crow – as a way for him to fly. They try it out on a cliff, and sure enough he flies. Moral of this story: if you hold a crow feather, you can fly. Go try it.

We’re down to four minutes in the film, so we rush inside to the night of the circus. The clowns are being annoying and holding their trampoline, while Dumbo sits atop of a much, much higher burning building. He takes off with the feather and plummets towards the ground before, at the last minute, zooming into the air. The crowd cheers, the creepy clowns run and look angry, and we close out with newspapers saluting the flying elephant and its award-winning manager. Dumbo has his own private train car, complete with Mama Jumbo riding in the back happily and unchained.

Extras:

“Dumbo Trailer” is exactly that, a trailer of one of the more recent re-releases of the movie lasting a little over a minute.

“Disney As Told By Emoji: Dumbo” lasts a little under four minutes and, yes, tells the story of Dumbo through emojis on a cell phone. Sure. Why not.

“Deleted Sequence: The Mouse’s Tale” is five minutes and tells, though artwork and the original print of the film story, the story of Timothy telling Dumbo why he should be afraid of mice. Interesting enough.

“Taking Flight: The Making of Dumbo” is the real highlight here, lasting right near half an hour. Through archival footage, artwork, and new interviews (probably for when this was a feature on the latest DVD release), the story of the movie’s creation is told. Well worth your half an hour.

Should you watch it?

Can anyone say anything but “watch it” for Dumbo? First, it is only an hour. In today’s world where you’re lucky to escape a movie two and a half hours after it starts, this is a miracle. You can watch it after dinner and still have time for bathtime before bed.

Yes, it’s a watch. It’s a great story and it is told well. There are things that haven’t aged well – whipping elephants, crows that can be offensive – but with the right teaching, you can explain to your children what’s wrong with them and what’s so right about Dumbo, big ears and all.