History YMMV / Dumbo2019

* WTHCastingAgency: Or in this case, Directing Agency. While some are under the assumption that this choice was made because of the [[DisneyAcidSequence "Pink Elephants on Parade"]] sequence from the original, plenty of people are baffled as to why Creator/TimBurton of all people was chosen to direct the film.

* AudienceAlienatingPremise: While Disney's Live Action Remakes are divisive in and of themselves, ''Dumbo'''s remake didn't do much to help justify its existence by being a HumanFocusedAdaptation centered around entirely new characters made up of common fantasy cliches while not doing much to expand on the original source material, leaving out iconic characters like Timothy Mouse, and making the characters they did keep (i.e. Dumbo, Mrs. Jumbo, and Casey Junior) non-sapient and designed [[UnintentionalUncannyValley a bit strangely]]. Add to a lack of Creator/TimBurton's signature style, and the film wound up bombing at the box office.

** Danny Elfman's rendition of the classic Dumbo songs "Pink Elephants on Parade" and "Casey Jr" are great to hear, being a mix of their classic versions but with the Elfman touch.

* HilariousInHindsight: This film features Creator/DannyDeVito, who's best known role is playing ComicBook/ThePenguin for ''Film/BatmanReturns'', starring alongside Creator/ColinFarrell. Farrell would later play the Penguin himself for ''Film/TheBatman2022''.

* EsotericHappyEnding: The film ends with [[spoiler:Dumbo and his mother being released into the wilds of Asia, despite the fact that they were raised in captivity, and captive-raised animals tend to have difficulty surviving in the wild in reality. There is a disturbing possibility that Mrs. Jumbo will be either shot by poachers or raped by a bull elephant due to her inexperience of living in the wild.]]

** There's also the UncannyValley look of the title character to contend with and the fact that this is definitely a HumanFocusedAdaptation -- one that's 112 minutes long versus the original's 64 and appears to be condensing most of the original's events into its first act.

* UncannyValley:

* BrokenAesop: While the film celebrates the circus going animal-free at the end, the timing of a message "don't use animals in the circus" feels... late. The Ringling Brothers Circus the last US circus to feature elephants stopped using elephants in their shows in 2016, and shut down completely the next year in 2017, two years before the film came out. Ringling Brother's parent company ''Feld Entertainment'' furthermore is also the organizer of Theatre/DisneyOnIce meaning Disney had been working alongside the circus's owners for years.
** Disney owns live elephants in their Kilimanjaro Safari attraction at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida. Albeit it is an accredited zoo with a large professional veterinarian staff and a sponsored conservation effort (which even helped discover beehives are a natural elephant deterrent to humanely protect farmer's crops in Africa), but it still feels counter-intuitive to the film's statement against not using animals for entertainment.

* ClicheStorm: One of the chief criticisms of the remake is its totally by-the-numbers script and story structure. When it isn't rehashing elements of the original film, the new [[HumanFocusedAdaptation human-focused story elements]] basically fill them in with lots of cliches from other family and fantasy films. The one dimensional personalities of the lead characters and the sluggish pacing only helped call further attention to the film's all around uninspired nature.

** We may presume that the matriarchs of this herd will help her. Also, if the people responsible know where she was captured, they may have made an effort to release her in the same area. That may be her family down there.

* {{Narm}}:
** The Pink Elephants on Parade sequence, which is actually quite cool, is punctuated by Dumbo nodding along to the music. About six times.
** Millie’s interest in science never once has any effect on the plot (aside from her making the link between Dumbo's flying and the MagicFeather, which rather predictably turns out to be a FalseCause anyway), making it extremely obvious that it only exists for cheap feminist points without actually putting any work in.

* SlowPacedBeginning: Due to an hours worth of AdaptationExpansion, the film has a rather sluggishly paced first act that the lion's share of the original films elements are crammed into before the film veers off into newer territory when the protagonists wind up working at Dreamland. If you’ve ever wondered why the original film is only an hour long, this gives a pretty compelling reason.

* WhatAnIdiot:
** In the climatic scene, where Vandervere, frantic to stop a plot to help Jumbo escape the circus, overloads Dreamland’s electrical system (after Dumbo and Collette had cut power to most of the park to allow Medici’s troupe to carry out their plan), starting a huge fire that destroys much of Dreamland. Had he just calmed down, taken a deep breath and listened to his control booth technicians, he would have properly restarted the electrical system.
** Dumbo's mother having to be sent away from the circus again because her cries were distracting Dumbo from his performances. You expect for Vandervere to all the more keep her to incentivise Dumbo into staying and while putting the family back together. Instead he tries to send her away, resulting in the third act.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: The film being a HumanFocusedAdaptation in the vein of ''Film/OneHundredAndOneDalmatians1996'' remake (and even that at least had an iconic human villain to work with instead), putting less focus on Dumbo and leaving Timothy Q. Mouse out of the picture.

* TheyChangedItNowItSucks: The film being a HumanFocusedAdaptation in the vein of the 1996 ''[[Film/OneHundredAndOneDalmatians1996 101 Dalmatians]]'' remake (and even that at least had an iconic human villain to work with instead), putting less focus on Dumbo and leaving Timothy Q. Mouse out of the picture.

* SlowPacedBeginning: Due to an hours worth of AdaptationExpansion, the film has a rather sluggishly paced first act that the lion's share of the original films elements are crammed into before the film veers off into newer territory when the protagonists wind up working at Dreamland.

* HilariousInHindsight: This film features Creator/DannyDeVito, who's best known role is playing ComicBook/ThePenguin for ''Film/BatmanReturns'', starring alongside Creator/ColinFarrell. Farrell would later play the Penguin himself for ''Film/TheBatman''.

* HilariousInHindsight: Disney puts out a movie about the evils of corporate mergers... just days after concluding a massive deal to buy out Fox. This was [[https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2019/03/26/dumbo-review-tim-burton-colin-farrell-eva-green-danny-devito-michael-keaton-walt-disney-fox/#51fca8886207 not lost]] [[https://film.avclub.com/tim-burton-s-live-action-dumbo-bites-the-corporate-hand-1833553819 on professional]] [[https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/26/18282326/dumbo-review-live-action-remake-tim-burton critics]] and had an effect on the film's critical reception, as those critics who most enjoyed the film mainly did so because of its political and social commentary.