His mother tries to defend him and is locked up, then the baby elephant learns he can fly and everything ends happily. The result of this is a feature film that looks entirely unique from Disney’s other feature output, and one that takes a lot of risks with new techniques and experimental animation.Įverybody knows the story of Dumbo, right? A baby circus elephant has huge ears, and gets made fun of. With many of the studio’s A-list feature animators already working on 1942’s Bambi, a secondary team was assembled, mostly from animators who had previously worked on the “Silly Symphonies” theatrical shorts. Walt Disney came across the story for Dumbo via an obscure children’s toy called a Roll-a-Book, and immediately licensed the story and put his team to work. Having run through all their profits from 1937’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and without today’s merchandising empire to fall back on, Disney needed money fast. As hard as it is to believe now, Pinocchio and Fantasia were both financial disasters with huge budgets and poor theatrical receptions. When Dumbo was released in 1941, Disney was in actual danger of going out of business. I have it because of vault-induced completionist panic, but you should buy it because I’m telling you right now that you won’t regret it.įirst of all, let’s have a little backstory. You know what though? Turns out the movie’s great. It doesn’t enjoy the same street cred as other less mainstream classics like The Black Cauldron or Robin Hood, and it doesn’t have that same set of indelible memories and ridiculously catchy music that the 90’s Disney renaissance did. I know I saw it a handful of times as a kid, but honestly over the years I had kind of written Dumbo off. And you know which one really surprised me? Yeah, that’s right. Knowing this, I have recently become all panicky regarding Disney’s ridiculous “vault” policy for their classics, and well…I’ve sort of started just getting all of them. The thing is though, a lot of Disney’s animated features are a time capsule of their era, representing a timeline of innovation for animation. When it comes to Disney movies, everybody’s got a favorite, usually Aladdin or The Lion King. With Blu-Ray, the intent is to purchase the best films in a wide variety of genres, the titles one would need to teach a film class or render educated services as a critic. Right now though DVD is my 80’s and 90’s cartoon library, the only thing keeping the format alive in this house. I’ve easily owned over a thousand, and I just kind of bought whatever. When DVD came around, well…honestly my DVD collection was kind of a mess. My VHS library was a catalog of 70’s and 80’s horror, along with a lot of obscure cartoons. Sure, some movies will always get repurchased, but I try to do something different with the overall collection. Every time I start a movie collection on a particular format, it seems to take a different shape. Okay, hear me out here…this is definitely not my normal review fare, but I’m writing this for a reason.
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