Mister Tee wrote:The long-term among you may remember a post I wrote back at the old board called The Gigli Syndrome, which hypothesized that critics went after the much-maligned Bennifer film not because it was so much worse than other movies of the time, but because everyone seemed to tacitly agree this particular effort was fair game, and it should take the hit for the whole dreary cinema eco-system.
I remember that post and while you are not wrong,
Gigli,
Hudson Hawke and
Wild Wild West were vile films that deserved every bad thing that was printed about them.
The Last Action Hero, though, was just dull, not vile.
I beat these guys by a more than a week writing in my DVD review of
Dumbo last week of my dismay for the live-action Disney remakes ending with a plea to Disney not to re-make
Bambi as a live-action film because no one wants to see Bambi's mother shot in real life.
Here's the review:
Dumbo is the latest live-action version of a Disney animated classic to reach home video.
For eighteen years,
101 Dalmatians was the only animated Disney film to get a live-action remake from the studio. Then in quick succession we got
Sleeping Beauty (as
Maleficent),
Cinderella,
The Jungle Book,
Beauty and the Beast, the current
Aladdin, and the forthcoming
The Lion King,
Lady and the Tramp, and
The Little Mermaid. Discounting Universal’s
Snow White and the Huntsman, there’s currently talk about remaking
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs as a live-action film as well. There’s no talk of a live-action Disney remake of
Pinocchio but Guillermo del Toro is planning his own animated version of Carlo Collodi’s beloved classic.
There’s certainly no harm in reimagining these classics as live-action or combination animated/live-action dramas. Most are based on centuries old tales that have been filmed before as live-action events.
Aladdin, for example, was first filmed live-action in 1917 as Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp, then in 1926 became the first animated feature as Germany’s
The Adventures of Prince Achmed combining Aladdin’s story with that of the prince. 1940’s The Thief of Bagdad, which was a variation on the Aladdin story, remains a beloved live-action masterpiece. The 1992 Disney animated musical version of
Aladdin was equally beloved in its day, the current live-action remake, not so much.
I found both Disney’s
Sleeping Beauty and
Maleficent to be ho-hum versions of the classic fairy tale. To me, both Disney versions of
Cinderella pale in comparison to Rodgers & Hammerstein’s made for TV musical.
I’ve always preferred the 1942 non-Disney live-action version and Disney’s own 1994 live-action version of
The Jungle Book to Disney’s animated 1967 musical version and certainly to their 2016 live-action remake of the 1967 animated musical. While I love Jean Cocteau’s 1946 live-action French version of
Beauty and the Beast, Disney’s 1991 animated musical version has been my favorite Disney film ever since. I found the 2017 live-action remake to be pretty good in its own right as well.
The original 1941 version of
Dumbo was the most successful animated film released in the 1940s. At one hour and four minutes, it was a breezy tale about a young circus elephant who is ridiculed by his fellow pachyderms because of his large ears which, because of their size, he discovers give him the ability to fly. The new version, directed by Tim Burton, adds 48 minutes to the running time which is padded with a story about the owners of the circus and the father and daughter who care for the elephants. The story didn’t need the padding. It was perfect as it was. Colin Farrell, Michael Keaton, Danny DeVito and the rest of the cast are wasted in the film in which the few memorable moments belong to Dumbo and his mom.
Please, Disney, do not ever remake Bambi as a live-action film. No one wants to see Bambi’s mother shot in real life.
As with all Disney releases, if you want to own the DVD or Blu-ray of the 2019 Dumbo, grab it while you can before it's withdrawn and costs a small fortune to buy it out of circulation.