Disney

Dumbo: What Big Fears You Have

Jeremy BeckReviews
Colin Farrell and kids in Tim Burton's "Dumbo"

Tim Burton’s Dumbo is a movie about a plucky band of misfits who struggle to reclaim their individuality and artistry while operating under the yoke of an oppressive, profit-driven machine. It is also a live-action remake of a 78-year-old animated landmark, the latest in the continuing assembly line of Walt Disney Studios productions designed to ruthlessly exploit nostalgia for its classic properties, and to churn that nostalgia into a merchandising bonanza. This contradiction is not subtle. When you buy a ticket to see Dumbo, you do not need to possess abnormally large ears to perceive the sound of Disney executives laughing on their merry way to the bank.

That this new Dumbo works as well as it does—that it periodically slips the shackles of dutiful blockbuster adaptation and acquires a frisson of genuine wonder and joy—is a testament to Burton’s showmanship and skill. Now 60 years old, the director rose to fame for his portraits of oddballs (usually portrayed by Michael Keaton or Johnny Depp), which he infused with exotic color and seductive angularity. Age may have blunted Burton’s sharp edges—his last few films, including the underrated Big Eyes, lacked the decisive personality of his early work—but he has remained a capable purveyor of strange spectacle. Here, he is the consummate ringmaster, dazzling you with one illusion after another in a feverish effort to conceal what lies behind the curtain. Read More

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Holiday Gift Bag: Mary Poppins Returns

Jeremy BeckReviews
Emily Blunt in "Mary Poppins Returns"

The book on Mary Poppins is that she’s practically perfect in every way. Like most movies, Mary Poppins Returns, which returns to the home of the Banks family on Cherry Tree Lane after a 54-year absence, is not perfect; it isn’t even very good. But it is hard to quibble with the rightness of Emily Blunt’s performance as the titular nanny, all withering glares and superior disdain. As a singer, Blunt is no Julie Andrews (who is?), but her perfectly calibrated acidity helps anchor a film that is otherwise so flimsy, it’s prone to drift off into nothingness, sliding up a banister until it disappears into the ether.

Not that Mary Poppins Returns is quiet. Directed by Rob Marshall, who seems to have become the emissary of the new-age Hollywood musical almost by default, it boasts a number of suitably impressive and boisterous numbers, which have been staged with evident care and skill. Yet there is a dispiriting adequacy to Marshall’s choreography, a lack of genuine wonder and flair. The music here is perfectly fine, but it seems unlikely that any of the songs will grow to acquire the classic status of “A Spoonful of Sugar”, or even join the ranks of more recent Disney hits such as “Let It Go” and “You’re Welcome”. Read More

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Holiday Gift Bag: Bumblebee

Jeremy BeckReviews
Hailee Steinfeld in "Bumblebee"

As a girl-and-her-robot story, Bumblebee is genuinely playful and affecting. Sure, Hailee Steinfeld’s Charlie is a walking cliché, tormented both by memories of her dead dad and by the richer, blonder girls who mock her awkwardness and her relative poverty. But Steinfeld brings real depth to the one-dimensional role, especially once she starts sharing her garage—where she toils to repair her father’s old Corvette, thereby establishing her tomboy bona fides—with the titular transformer. With a canary-yellow paint job and glowing blue eyes, Bumblebee proves to be an agile comic partner, whether he’s grooving to the sounds of The Smiths or inadvertently rampaging through Charlie’s home like the dog from Turner & Hooch. Director Travis Knight (Kubo and the Two Strings) has a good handle on social misfits, and he wields some impressive special effects—in addition to those iridescent baby-blues, Bumblebee has metallic flaps that double as puppy-like ears—to make the robot impressively expressive; the computer code becomes a character, one who conveys anxiety, devotion, and fear. His cold steel will warm your heart. Read More

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Beauty and the Beast: A Provincial Remake, But Some New Magic Flickers

Jeremy BeckReviews
Dan Stevens and Emma Watson in Disney's remake of "Beauty and the Beast"

“You can’t judge people by who their father is,” Mrs. Potts sagely intones. This preoccupation with parentage is new to this version of Beauty and the Beast, Bill Condon’s half-enchanting, half-enervating remake of the 1991 animated classic. But while Mrs. Potts’ wisdom is undeniable—she speaks in the voice of Emma Thompson, after all—it is impossible to view this latest child of Disney without considering the long shadow cast by its progenitor. Every work of art must be judged on its own terms, yet the question lingers: Was there a genuine reason to make this movie, an artistic justification beyond the piles of cash that the studio is already raking in? Or, to turn another of Mrs. Potts’ observations into a question, is there something there that wasn’t there before?

Yes and no. Operating under the all-seeing mandate of a corporate overlord, Condon and his screenwriters, Stephen Chbosky and Evan Spiliotopoulos, have transported the original’s two-dimensional drawings into spit-and-glue live action with a predictable degree of fidelity. This immediately lowers the remake’s ceiling; imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is perhaps the laziest form of filmmaking. Yet this new incarnation of Beauty and the Beast, while expectedly faithful to the original, is not entirely a retread. Narratively, it has some additional backstory, which is arguably extraneous but which nevertheless adds heft to the movie’s thematic interest in the bond between parents and their offspring. Musically, beyond the instantly hummable hits from one of the biggest-selling soundtracks of the ’90s, it exhibits a handful of original songs, several of which are lousy but a few of which are actually pretty good. And of course, it features the services of a litany of estimable British and American actors, who help imbue an otherwise commercial enterprise with artisanal craft. Read More

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Moana: A Girl and a God on the High Seas

Jeremy BeckReviews
Dwayne Johnson and Auli’i Cravalho are on an adventure in Disney's "Moana"

Midway through Moana, the iridescent and irresistible new animated adventure from Walt Disney Studios, an observer sizes up the title character: “If you wear a dress and have an animal sidekick, you’re a princess.” The speaker is the demigod Maui, and along with his other impressive talents—shape-shifter, warrior, chest-thumper—you can add meta commentator. Disney is as much a cultural institution as a movie studio, and Maui’s blunt assessment of Moana’s effective nobility—she feebly objects that she’s the daughter of a chief, not a king—reflects the company’s evolving self-awareness. Now in its ninth decade, the Mouse House has churned out countless tales of feminine royalty, films that are, depending on whom you ask, either exciting and empowering or formulaic and stereotypic. Moana is, in one way or another, all of these things. Yes, it’s yet another journey of self-discovery, featuring yet another plucky heroine of high birth, one who follows in the well-trodden footsteps of Aurora, Ariel, and Anna. And so what? There are far worse blueprints to hew to, much less to subtly reengineer and reinvigorate. Winking commentary aside, Moana doesn’t reinvent the (spinning) wheel, but it does capably tweak and troubleshoot the Disney formula, resulting in a thoroughly enjoyable movie that’s by turns playful and poignant.

This incremental progress begins, of course, with the film’s setting. Long criticized for its emphatic whiteness, Disney has endeavored in recent years to diversify its universe, and Moana continues that trend, taking place in Polynesia. Whether this represents legitimate growth or mere tokenism is not for me to say; in any event, I am less interested in the political dimensions of this movie than its cinematic ones. And as a piece of storytelling, the opening act of Moana is pleasant but unremarkable. Moana (voiced by newcomer Auli’i Cravalho) is the restless daughter of a local chief, dutifully obeying her tribe’s customs but constantly feeling a silent tug from the Pacific. You know the drill: She feels unfulfilled with her routine, and she chafes at her father’s insistence that she never venture beyond their island’s barrier reef. In other words, she’s a lot like Ariel. Or Merida. Or Rapunzel. To paraphrase another famous Disney character who will be returning to theaters early next year: There must be more than this provincial fishing life! Read More

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