Lost in the Movies: Dumbo ("Fixing a Hole")

Dumbo ("Fixing a Hole")


This Sunday brings, as all Sundays do, a fresh "Fixing a Hole." This week I've selected guest writer Stephen Gebbett-Russell of Checking on My Sausages to cover the Disney classic Dumbo, continuing the theme of "Animated Animals" for November.

He has an interesting take on the film, ambivalently noting its drawbacks while appreciating its unique charms. Here's a snippet to whet your appetite, after which you can follow the link for the full piece.


"While the story is a bit of a bore (and by no means offering an inspirational moral to take home, as we shall see), the film occasionally gets off the ground in a few magical details, the red ribbon that wards off the evil eye: Dumbo's bath-time frolics with his mother, a kangaroo cradling its young and creaking like a rocking chair, a clever song that plays on nouns and verbs (“I've seen a fireside chat, a baseball bat...”) and a drunken hallucination that includes a hideous monster made up of elephant heads and ends with floating pachyderms softly morphing into clouds in a dawn sky."

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