"Dumbo" Review: The Film Doesn't Soar
2019 promises to give us a slew of live-action films based off of some classic property. Aladdin, The Lion King and Dumbo are the titles parents can get ready to take their kids to. As a parent of young children, I now realize that some films my parents took me to growing up is another example of their love because sitting through it must have been hard to endure. Dumbo is retribution for their sacrifice, and I can only hope the rest of the year doesn’t exact more vengeance!
Danny DeVito runs the Medici Bros circus as Max Medici. His circus of outsiders travel from town to town in 1919 by train, bringing fun to the towns they stop in. Amongst the circus family is Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) and his two children: Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins). They take care of the elephants, which includes Dumbo, the newest addition to the clan. Dumbo has oversized ears and they quickly learn that the tickle of a feather can make him fly.
Once the word is out that there’s a flying elephant in the world, the chance to bring the spectacle under his own circus brings tycoon V.A. Vandevere (Michael Keaton) running. He buys the Medici circus and pushes to make Dumbo the main event. You can imagine the heroism that has to follow in order to keep Dumbo safe.
This film comes down to casting and it’s hit and miss. Danny DeVito is great, but he gets put into a closet literally and figuratively after Vandevere takes over. Keaton enjoys playing Vandevere a little too much, becoming a caricature of the evil villain missing a mustache but with a bad toupee. Farrell’s southern accent is absolutely ridiculous, and Nico Parker’s delivery of her lines is equally cringeworthy.
The first half of the film feels like Disney got director Tim Burton to succumb to their bright and beautiful ways, but once Dumbo goes under Vandevere control the film takes a darker tone. Cinematographer Ben Davis changes the bright and hopeful lighting scheme to a dark and oppressed washed out dark blue. There’s no doubt that Burton is able to capture some of the wonder and awe of the circus through his set pieces and swells in the score, but that’s the best part of the film and it’s not enough.
My kids loved the film, and I was shocked at the number of adults in the theater without kids as well. So this film will definitely have an audience of kids or adults looking for a nostalgia fix from the 1941 animation. If it’s an indication of the films we’re about to see this year take a deep breath and make sure you’re seats are reclinable because at least your money will go toward getting a comfortable spot to watch the back of your eyelids.
Rating: C-
"Spider-Man: Homecoming" Review
It’s an awesome feeling to watch another great Spider-Man film. Spider-Man: Homecoming is one of the best MCU films to date, as well as the best Spidey film since 2004’s Spider-Man 2. With an unprecedented deal between Sony Pictures and Marvel Studios to allow the webhead into the Marvel Cinematic Universe after the disappointment that was The Amazing Spider-Man franchise, as a lifelong fan of his, I’m happy to report that Spidey is in good hands once again. This is a film that will have you grinning the entire runtime.
Two months after his scene-stealing turn in Captain America: Civil War, Peter Parker (Tom Holland) adjusts to life in Queens after the Battle of Berlin, which they recap greatly via a cellphone movie that he created about the trip. As he waits for his next big assignment from Tony Stark (Robert Downey, Jr.), Peter comes across the crosshairs of Adrian Toomes/The Vulture (Michael Keaton), who has a personal vendetta against Tony after basically putting him out of business after the events of 2012’s The Avengers.
First things first, it seems like Tom Holland was born to play Peter/Spidey. Throughout the 133-minute runtime, it appears that Holland is having the time of his life. He builds on his appearance from Civil War into what I would imagine Peter being if I was reading the comics. Holland takes the best qualities of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield and rolls them all into one! He plays Peter perfectly. Michael Keaton as Adrian/The Vulture is quite honestly the best villain in the MCU since Loki. I had doubts about The Vulture since he’s typically goofy in the comics, but the way director Jon Watts and his screenwriters (which included him, John Francis Daley, Jonathan Goldstein, Christopher Ford, Chris McKenna, and Erik Sommers) approached him in the film was well done. There’s a scene between him and Holland that’s quite honestly one of the best scenes in a Spidey film yet. Like Holland, Keaton seems to be having fun playing a bad guy. Jacob Batalon as Peter’s best friend Ned steals the film from time to time with some of the funniest lines in the film!
I also enjoyed the grounded tone that the film has compared to the other MCU films. If I had to make a comparison, this is probably the most grounded film since 2015’s Ant-Man. Rather than use end of the world stakes in this film, it was a story that suited Spidey’s needs as a high school student with great power. The cinematography that Watts and his DP, Salvatore Totino, went with complements the storytelling. Some of the shots in the film look like something you would see straight out from the panels, and they even recreate some here and there. The action scenes are fun and easy to follow as well.
This is probably the funniest MCU film to date, from the in-jokes of the MCU, to how hot Marisa Tomei’s Aunt May is to some running jokes (you’ll know it when you see it). I was surprised by how much I was laughing throughout the film. Finally, unlike The Amazing Spider-Man 2 which tried to cram in every character they could possibly think of, Spider-Man: Homecoming opens doors that they could further explore in future installments in a natural way.
If there’s anything wrong with the film, there was not much character development with some of the characters in the film, especially with The Vulture’s crew: The Tinkerer (Michael Chernus) and the Shockers (Bokeem Woodbine and Logan Marshall-Green). The CGI in some places seemed like they were unfinished and if you want to know as little as possible about this film before going into the theater do your best to avoid the trailers.
Overall, if you can’t tell, I loved Spider-Man: Homecoming. After the hiccups of the past couple of films, they got him right again and I’m excited to see where Sony/Marvel take Spidey next. Watts seems like the perfect director to steer this franchise forward. There’s so much I can talk about this film, but I don’t want to spoil the fun for you, and I can’t recommend this film enough. It’s one of the most fun films you’ll watch this summer. As always, be sure to stay until the end for a little surprise. Go see this!
Rating: B+
"The Founder" Review
What do we make of our corporate leaders as people? Names like Steve Jobs, Henry Ford and Walt Disney are embedded in the popular conscious as much as any kid wizard or snap-together playthings. Though we have access to the legacy of CEOs and leaders, many institutional heads are not as personally familiar as their product. We live in a time where tech titans are the subjects of top-billed films and non-tech icons may seem like an ancient generation.
The Founder is a straightforward biopic of an analogue man, an archetype of mid-century, middle American salesman, Ray Kroc. Kroc is introduced hocking milkshake mixers and scraping by on meager demand for his products when an unusually large order comes in from California. There, Kroc meets Maurice “Mac” McDonald and Richard “Dick” McDonald (John Carroll Lynch and Nick Offerman, respectively) brothers and the founders of a new assembly-line style restaurant that does away with car hops and barbeque trays for disposable packaging and made-to-order hamburger meals. Kroc smells real success in the McDonald’s revolutionary kitchen and he wants in. The brothers Mac reluctantly allow Kroc in and he quickly gets to work franchising the operation. The Founder presents Ray Kroc as the foundational understanding for chasing the American dream; every man is just one good idea (his own or another’s) away from striking rich. If Ray Kroc wasn’t the little-f founder of McDonald’s first burger shop, he was the capital-f Founder of the McDonald’s brand.
The Founder follows several blockbuster films about wildly successful company heads that have built their legacies on the work of others. It doesn’t dabble in David Fincher’s upstart backstabbing (The Social Network), nor in Danny Boyle’s confrontational schadenfreude (Steve Jobs). However, the Founder does marvel at its central ego. Robert Siegel’s script hovers over Ray’s marriage to Ethel Kroc (Laura Dern) like a buzzard. Dern’s Ethel offers one of the film’s best performances as the exhausted supporter of Keaton’s workaholic Ray. However, Ray’s relationship with future second-wife Joan Smith (Linda Cardellini) feels undercooked. It matters to his “persistence will pay off” megalomania that he discards his first marriage, but the squirrely middle-aged salesman doesn’t appear charismatic enough to charm the blonde bombshell presented within, considering her marriage to an already successful restauranteur Rollie (Patrick Wilson). Director John Lee Hancock uses Smith as the manifestation of Kroc’s growing success, framed in a red dress and topped with a golden coif (a vision of French-fries incarnate?) singing “Pennies from Heaven.”
Composed in un-ironic reverence, The Founder strings the business of building a fast-food empire together with Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, clutched baseballs, stuffed drive-ins and teen greasers. It rolls Kroc’s cornflower blue Plymouth right up against the line of tasteful nostalgia and uses red, white and gold to liven the screen. But the film’s nostalgia is as innocent as Kevin Arnold or Richie Cunningham. Between repeated cuts to American flags and church steeples, Kroc lays out a plan for McDonalds as a cultural staple, “the new American church”, and a gathering place for the hungry families “and we’re open on Sundays.” Don’t expect much cynicism or moral critique to balance; Kroc is simply an inevitability of capitalist enterprise.
The Founder is not built on redemption or destruction, but is instead focused on building an entertaining story in the singular drive of one man who took a good idea to greatness and the many people who were brought up and down along the way. It pleases and informs, but leaves moral certitude at the audience’s feet.
Rating: B