Dumbo 720p - (1941 Lang: English)

A perfect film - Short and sweet.

All the other elephants shun Dumbo for his gigantic ears, and his mother has been locked up for protecting him, so he's all alone in the world... until Timothy Q Mouse shows up.

A beautiful piece of work. At just 60 mins, it is short and sweet. But it also contains some of Disney's best visual poetry. Dumbo's not saying a single word means his entire character is created through the physical. The entire opening sequence, till the gossipy elephants start talking, plays out without words, and its like the best silent movies. Simply beautiful.

Mrs Jumbo rearing up and destroying the big top to protect Dumbo from taunting kids is an incredible scene. Dumbo's mother spends the movie imprisoned in a carriage labelled "mad elephant" - and surely one of the most beautiful, heartbreaking scenes i've ever seen plays out when Dumbo and his mother have contact only by touching trunks, through the bars in the window of her cell. A beautiful sequence begins: the beautiful song "Baby Mine" plays as she cradles him in her trunk, and when Dumbo leaves she can't see him, and she stretches her trunk as far as she can out the window to try and reach him, and... oh, its too much!

The pink elephants sequence is as close to trippy Disney ever got - and its brilliant. One of the best, most inventive sequences in animation history. Great song, too.

Some terrific songs: Look Out for Mr Stork, Casey Junior (the train song), Pink Elephants, When I see an elephant fly and Baby Mine.

Timothy Q Mouse is a great character, the animation is so concise and perfect, great songs, the message that if you believe you can overcome your handicaps you will so inspiring and beautiful, and the movie so short and sweet it will forever retain its appeal.

Dumbo is a 1941 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The fourth Disney animated feature film, it is based upon the storyline written by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Pearl for the prototype of a novelty toy ("Roll-a-Book"). The main character is Jumbo Jr., a semi-anthropomorphic elephant who is cruelly nicknamed "Dumbo". He is ridiculed for his big ears, but in fact he is capable of flying by using his ears as wings. Throughout most of the film, his only true friend, aside from his mother, is the mouse, Timothy – a relationship parodying the stereotypical animosity between mice and elephants.

Dumbo was released on October 23, 1941. Made to recoup the financial losses of Fantasia, it was a deliberate pursuit of simplicity and economy for the Disney studio. At 64 minutes, it is one of Disney's shortest animated features. Sound was recorded conventionally using the RCA System. One voice was synthesized using the Sonovox system, but it, too, was recorded using the RCA System.

A flock of storks deliver babies while circus animals are being transported by train from their "Winter Quarters".[5] Mrs. Jumbo, one of the elephants, receives her baby who is soon tormented by the other (female) elephants because of his large ears, and they nickname him "Dumbo".

Once the circus is assembled, Mrs. Jumbo loses her temper at a group of boys for tormenting Dumbo, and is locked up and deemed mad. Dumbo is shunned by the other elephants and with no mother to care for him, he is now alone. Timothy Q. Mouse, who feels sympathy for Dumbo and becomes determined to make him happy again, appoints himself as Dumbo's mentor and protector.

The circus director makes Dumbo the top of an elephant pyramid stunt after being secretly encouraged by Timothy, but Dumbo trips over his ears and misses his target, injuring the other elephants and bringing down the big top. Dumbo is made a clown as a result, officially having the other elephants deem him no longer one of them, and plays the main role in an act that involves him falling into a vat of pie filling. Despite his newfound popularity and fame, Dumbo dislikes this job and is now more miserable than ever.

To cheer Dumbo up, Timothy takes him to visit his mother. On the way back, Dumbo cries and then starts to hiccup, so Timothy takes him for a drink of water from a bucket which, unknown to them, has accidentally had a bottle of champagne knocked into it by the clowns as they decide to speak to the circus director about changing up Dumbo's stunt and a pay raise. As a result, Dumbo and Timothy both become drunk and see hallucinations of pink elephants.

The next morning, Dumbo and Timothy wake up in a tree. Timothy wonders how they got up in the tree, and concludes that Dumbo flew up there using his large ears as wings. With the help from a group of crows, Timothy is able to get Dumbo to fly again, using a psychological trick of a "magic feather" to boost his confidence.

Back at the circus, Dumbo performs the same stunt which involves jumping from a high building, this time, from a much higher platform thanks to the clowns speaking to the circus director earlier. On the way down, Dumbo loses the feather; Timothy quickly tells him that the feather was never magical, and that he is still able to fly. Dumbo is able to pull out of the dive and flies around the circus, finally striking back at his tormentors as a stunned audience looks on in amazement.

After this performance, Dumbo becomes a media sensation, Timothy becomes his manager, and Dumbo and Mrs. Jumbo are given a private car on the circus train.

A perfect film. The design is beautiful and deceptive in its simplicity. While it may lack the overstuffed quality of `Pinocchio' or the abstract one of `Fantasia,' the style of `Dumbo' is elegant, vivid, and occasionally grotesque in ways that recall not only classic circus posters but also Paul Cadmus paintings and vintage `New Yorker' cover art. In fact, the entire production has a hint of nostalgia about it; for all its dark story elements, the film presents a rosy-hued portrait of old America (with Casey Junior cheerfully pulling his traveling circus through green open fields) that must have seemed very comforting as audiences prepared for the unforeseeable terrors of another World War. (A `Dumbombers for Defense' poster in the film's epilogue is the one joking reference to an increasingly unsteady world situation.) In the midst of this cozy landscape, we find a simple, tender story about acceptance and mother love, with the characters of both Dumbo and Mrs. Jumbo finding a wonderful eloquence in their muteness. These performances are true triumphs of animation. The other characters, both good and bad, are painted with broad, memorable strokes. It's become fashionable to look rather harshly upon the Jim Crow sequence and all its uncomfortable associations, and it can be difficult for a modern audience to watch it without cringing slightly. But it should be pointed out that the crows are not only the film's cleverest characters (both in terms of thought and language), they are also the only ones except Timothy to show any sympathy whatsoever to the little elephant; after all, they are outsiders themselves. The sequence is a play on a stereotype, that can't be denied, but I would argue that it is an attempt to revise that stereotype into something positive and sympathetic. The songs and score are flawless, and the show-stopping, nightmarish pink elephant sequence keeps things from getting too artistically conservative--and, just like the rest of the film, it still thrills us no matter how many times we have seen it.