Have they seen the original animated version? It has been kind of buried because the depiction of the roustabouts and the jive-talking crows are considered racist. On the other hand I always thought the lesson of the movie was not to discriminate against a person (or elephant) because of how they look, and that the roustabouts and crows were depicted favorably vs. the greedy circus owners. If you can get past the controversy, it is one of the Disney classics. As a kid I loved the sequence where the train goes through the rain and then the elephants and roustabouts set up the circus in the next town. I guess maybe people would also object to the grandkids seeing Dumbo get drunk. But who can forget "pink elephants on parade"?
The reviews I have seen on the Tim Burton version have been negative, style over substance, and with no heart. As far as the controversy, at least not as bad as Song of the South, which I don't believe has ever been released for home video. Not really a classic of animation like Dumbo though. It does seem a shame that anything derived from the Uncle Remus stories are banished now. Br'er Rabbit and his friends came from African folk tales, and I have always thought the story about the tar baby said a lot about human nature, although it sounds quite offensive. Sometimes a tar baby is just a baby made out of tar. Cleaning out a bunch of books and taking them to an annual charity book sale, I came across a copy of Little Black Sambo. That one did not go to the book sale, they probably would have burned it. But sometimes, watching the U.S. Congress or the U.K. Parliament, I expect them to turn into butter. -----Original Message----- From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Chuck McCown Sent: Sunday, March 31, 2019 9:36 AM To: [email protected] Subject: [AFMUG] OT Movie Review &c My grandkids hate my keyboard... security device I guess. Saw Dumbo with them yesterday. They seemed to like it, I thought it was pretty poor. -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
