ADAM That was awesome. I love that movie so much. It’s the best one.

BETH Why?

ADAM Why? Because the whole movie I was quivering with indignation at how mean they were to him; it hurts my feelings. And all of the stock characters are highly appealing and individuated, and the songs are all great. I can sing every song, I think.

BROOM The musical score was miles above the previous ones; I think this was the first one that was done by Oliver Wallace. The movie is notably different from the previous three in that it’s really dialogue-based and contemporary.

ADAM Except that the hero doesn’t say anything.

BETH And neither does his mother.

ADAM She says the words “Jumbo Junior.”

BROOM I know, but the script actually gives weight to the dialogue; they talk out the plot. Timothy Mouse talks freely and there are a lot of verbal jokes.

ADAM Or just a lot of jokes – I mean the other ones aren’t funny, particularly. You can see hints of it in Jiminy Cricket, who is kind of like Timothy Mouse, as I said when we watched Pinocchio. But there’s a lot more adult, jokey humor in this. The gossipy bitch elephants are hilariously funny to me, in a way that I did not perceive when I was a kid.

BROOM In a verbal, scripted way. It allows itself to be funny in a way that the filmmakers thought was funny, whereas Pinocchio, though it did a little of that, felt very calculated and controlled. Here it felt like they did what they would be amused by.

BETH It felt contemporary. I guess working with original material helped it.

BROOM Remember, it’s based on a kid’s book; no one can find it now, but they did buy a property.

BETH Oh, I didn’t know.

ADAM It’s also very warm. The other stories seem stagier than this.

BETH That’s what I was trying to say. It felt less staged.

ADAM I almost cried during “Baby Mine.”

BETH I think BROOM always cries.

BROOM I didn’t this time because Adam was talking.

BETH I think that was calculated to prevent everyone from crying.

BROOM As for the others being more calculated and stagy, I thought this was a huge step ahead of Pinocchio. Fantasia is a weird one because it doesn’t work by the same rules, so you can’t quite tell where they were in their storytelling sophistication – but in this one, for the first time, you aren’t inclined to watch for the craft. They’ve really mastered it and you just watch the story. The sequences play so smoothly. The better musical scoring was a part of it – the underscoring works perfectly and draws you into it. I felt like they had gotten to a level of craft where now they could make any Disney movie.

ADAM There’s not really any showpiece animation in the movie except for “Pink Elephants.” But that’s amazing.

BROOM And creepy. What I never liked about that as a kid is – and I know they’re sort of bubbles and sort of elephants – but that they burst, that they keep being blown up. Or their flesh is torn – those elephants that are sewn together into a curtain and then ripped apart. Or one elephant throws a bolt of electricity at the other one and explodes it. Or they go around the screen and their heads twist together like balloons until they pop.

ADAM I don’t like the one where they turn plaid and then tug at each other.

BROOM It’s also disturbing to me when they turn into cars and a flag comes in and it’s made of an elephant’s trunk. I guess you’re supposed to imagine that an elephant is lowering it down but it seems to me more like it’s a flag somehow made out of elephant matter. That’s upsetting.

ADAM Much of this movie is upsetting. It’s terrible when she goes to the madhouse.

BETH I really did not like this when I was a child, and I think that’s why. Even though the Times review said it was a happy movie, and Disney himself said it was a happy movie, it did not seem happy. And the ending still seems a little bit abrupt. Suddenly he flies! It’s great! The end! There’s no real reunion with his mother.

BROOM They’re saving it for the very last second.

ADAM And all that happens to the lady elephants is they get hit with peanuts.

BETH Yes, and then they love him.

BROOM They love him because he saves the circus. They have a fancier train at the end.

BETH And he’s redeemed them as elephants; they don’t have to be ashamed of him.

ADAM Everyone is concerned with their own dignity: the elephants, the clowns…

BROOM The crows seemed pretty relaxed.

ADAM Well, I leave you to analyze that. Actually, I saw a gay subtext in this movie for the first time.

BROOM Well done!

ADAM Dumbo is excluded by all the grownups and then only discovers his true nature after a drunken evening when no one can remember what happened.

BETH I wondered if that was why you liked it so much. When I was watching it just now, I thought, “Maybe Adam is Dumbo.”

ADAM I don’t think I ever thought about it like that. I just think it’s touching and thrilling and sad.

BROOM When I was a kid I was bothered by things like, “They haven’t rehearsed this and they expect him to do it?” And “why can we see through one guy’s clothes but not the other guy’s?” And what are the clowns? I know it’s sort of a joke that when they take off their suits they’re still clowns, but that’s upsetting.

ADAM I find the scene when they’re erecting the circus in the rain horrible.

BETH I liked it this time, but I thought, “why did it have to be in the rain?”

ADAM And why did the elephants have to do all that work?

BROOM I thought that redeemed it from the uncomfortable lyrics. I know that the crows are obvious racial caricatures, but I find it more upsetting that while you watch the roustabouts laboring, they’re described in the song as being happy-hearted – and then they sing “when we get our pay, we throw our pay away!”

BETH The humans weren’t actually humans, they were just sort of figures.

BROOM Well, they were dark figures.

ADAM The only real humans, apart from the ringmaster, are those boys, and they seemed to be reused from Pinocchio. And the hippos seemed to be reused from Fantasia. I wonder if those are shout-outs.

BROOM They weren’t direct “reuses.” The hippos did look the same, though without the eyelashes. The wicked boys weren’t quite the same but they were certainly cut from the same cloth.

ADAM I think that the shortness of it totally works; it feels packed with incident. The ending is a little abrupt – I thought it was longer. I was wondering where I had gotten the image in my head of Dumbo as a bomber, but it’s from the ending.

BROOM Dumbombers, from Time magazine, or whichever that is. Time magazine is where you see Timothy J. Mouse signing his contract. [ed. actually “The National Weekly”]

ADAM That’s the only time you learn his name, I believe.

BROOM And I don’t know when you learn Jim Crow’s name.

ADAM I don’t think you do.

BROOM When I was a kid, I didn’t understand why the song was “Look Out for Mister Stork.” All the animals in the movie are happy when Mister Stork shows up, but the song is saying “You’d better watch out, or Mister Stork will come!” He’s a good guy – why would you “look out” for him? And I asked my parents, and they gave me some unsatisfying answer. This time through I also noted that all they elephants are female, which, regardless of whether that’s true in the circus, is a necessity for the story. If there were any male elephants in the movie, we’d enter into the question of who his father is.

ADAM Also, it would be harder to orphan him. All the other animals have fathers.

BROOM It would screw up the purity of the stork delivery.

ADAM I can still clearly picture the personalities of the five elephants. There’s the vicious one, and the Florence Nightingale one, and the ditzy one…

BROOM I also think the personalities of the five crows are good too, although we’re not supposed to like them now. But I thought they were nicely differentiated.

BETH I don’t know… how racist was it really?

BROOM As racism goes, I feel like it’s pretty mild. They didn’t have to touch this movie up – we saw it in its entirety; they didn’t change any dialogue as far as I know.

BETH And why is it wrong to take personalities that existed in the culture and transplant them to a cartoon?

ADAM When I was a kid I did not understand that the crows were black.

BROOM I think I understood in a general way. I didn’t think of them as being like people with black skin, but I knew that they were the same general thing that other cartoon black characters were. Aren’t there black vultures in the Jungle Book?

ADAM What is Timothy J. Mouse?

BROOM He’s Walt Disney, he’s from Kansas.

ADAM He’s not a huckster like Jiminy Cricket, but he’s a little puffed up, full of bravado, starstruck little guy.

BROOM I still take issue with the idea that Jiminy Cricket is a huckster. When Timothy says “Lots of people with big ears are famous,” is he talking about Walt Disney, or Clark Gable, or who?

BETH I don’t know.

BROOM I would be happy to set kids down in front of this now.

ADAM Absolutely.

BETH I don’t have any reservations but I remember not liking it, so I would not expect them to like it. Maybe boys like it more; maybe boys can handle the material better. I was so upset by it that I did not want to keep watching it.

ADAM But what early Disney movies could you watch? They all have horrible things in them.

BETH So far, Snow White is the least upsetting to my child self. I mean, Fantasia doesn’t really have anything.

BROOM It does have one outright horror sequence.

BETH Which seems removed from reality. I wasn’t relating to any characters.

ADAM What do you think was the most successful song in Dumbo?

BROOM “Baby Mine” is considered the most successful. The catchiest is “Casey Junior.”

ADAM That’s what I was going to say.

BETH It is. They knew it, too. They kept bringing it back.

BROOM Though I find myself humming “When I See an Elephant Fly.”

ADAM I do too. I’ve often wished I could remember more of the puns; now I know more of them.

BROOM “Look Out For Mister Stork” delights me every time I see it, but I can never remember the real melody.

BETH The production of that is that beautiful forties sound.

ADAM “Look Out For Mister Stork” for me blends in with “Pink Elephants on Parade.”

BROOM Oh, I’m sorry, “Pink Elephants on Parade” is the best song. And the entire dance break is emblazoned in my brain. It’s so beautifully orchestrated. And there’s incidental music in the score that’s fantastic too – like when she’s washing him, there’s a lovely little waltz.

BETH All around, thumbs up.

ADAM I think this is an early peak which it will be hard to match.