YMMV / Dumbo

• Adaptation Displacement: Though it's not entirely Disney's fault. The movie was based on an extremely obscure and unnoticed children's book that was only in print for a very brief time, which Walt just happened to stumble upon at a bookstore. It cost him only a couple of bucks to buy the book. In fact, if Disney hadn't made an adaptation of it, chances are Dumbo would literally have been almost completely unheard of today.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • In the climax, are all the clowns genuinely terrified of Dumbo flying and panicking? Or do some decide to go with the change in routine, like the ones that enter the barrel, because it's their job to entertain? After all, good comedians know when to improvise.
  • Is Smitty (the big-eared bully who incurs Mrs. Jumbo's wrath), really as much a Jerkass and the movie portrays him? Or has he been made fun of by his peers over his own big ears that he decided to do the same to Dumbo to make himself feel better? Or worse yet, is being teased all he's ever known and he just does it because, in his mind, that's what "friends" do?
• Applicability: While everyone is still stylized, the elephant herd all appear to be based off of Asian elephants. Meanwhile, Dumbo appears to have features that are more befitting of an African elephant. This reminds a lot of people of the bullying mixed-race children often got at the time - and still do to this day.
• Awesome Music:
  • "Baby Mine". All the other songs count as well, but that's due to catchiness instead of tear jerkiness.
  • For every Rail Enthusiast and Trainspotter out there, you have "Casey Jr." For added awesome, there's the version from Disney Sing-Along Songs, which sings it twice with the second round accompanied by train footage from other Disney shorts, in particular, The Brave Engineer and Mr. Mouse Takes a Trip.
  • "Pink Elephants on Parade." Trippy as all get-out, to be sure, but it has a nice beat to it, and the lyrics are very singable.
  • "When I See an Elephant Fly" may be seen as racist to some, but you cannot deny that those lyrics are hilarious, the harmonies swoon, and those crows have sweet dance moves.
  • "Look Out for Mr. Stork..." makes for a good way to open the story, as well as serving as a sort of unofficial "I Am" Song for the storks as a group.
• Base-Breaking Character: The crows. Some viewers claim that they are a racist portrayal of African-Americans and that they are portrayed as unemployed layabouts. Others point out that while dressed stereotypically so that the audience knows they are 'Black', they are the sole characters aside from Timothy who are sympathetic to Dumbo and readily help him. They additionally point out that it is Timothy they initially mock for his ridiculous idea of a flying elephant, ergo standing up to his 'authority'. They are also portrayed as being not only empathetic but also very clever, a trait not previously shown in stereotypical African American characters, especially animated ones. "Jim Crow", leader of the crows, is never named on screen and it was just a pun around the studio to mock the Jim Crow laws in the Southern United States (the film is set in Florida in 1941), this being a nickname for a Black man (the character's real name was Dandy, as in Jim-dandy, a term that dates from at least the 1840s meaning "first rate" or "perfect." It probably originated with Black entertainers).
• Best Known for the Fanservice: The belly-dancing pink elephant during the infamous sequence has gotten a lot of fan art.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The (in)famous "Pink Elephants On Parade". Acknowledged as confusing or outright Nightmare Fuel to younger or more vulnerable viewers, especially those not understanding Dumbo and Timothy are supposed to be drunk, although it's through this accident that Dumbo uses his ability to fly for the first time without knowing it.
• Common Knowledge: The lead crow being named "Jim" is commonly used by activists and mainstream media as an example of how problematic the film is... even though he is never referred to as "Jim" onscreen, only on original model sheets. More recent official sources have called him "Dandy Crow" instead. The original name was in reality changed as far back as in The '50s.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Casey Junior. Despite appearing in about four scenes throughout the whole film, he has a memorable theme song, got a book based on how he was purchased by the circus (aptly titled The Story of Casey Jr. by Walt Disney), and got a place in Disneyland as one of the original attractions, making him one of the most iconic characters maybe not just from this film, but the early Disney Animated Canon in general, and that's saying a lot, especially for a Flat Character like him.
  • Mr. Stork is also easily one of the most iconic characters from the film for redefining the popular trope it literally fits in, leading him to reappear in Lambert the Sheepish Lion among other media.
  • The crows in Latin America, thanks to Woolseyism.
• Ethnic Scrappy: The crows, whom the protagonist meets after his infamous Big-Lipped Alligator Moment nightmare. Their speech mannerisms and clothing are clearly inspired by contemporary blackface minstrel shows (although all of them save for the leader were voiced by black singers, the Hall Johnson Choir). While they are sympathetic to Dumbo and ultimately are the ones who help him learn to fly, they are also shown as simpletons who speak in broken English, and who are easily amused.
• Fair for Its Day:
  • Consider that the crows are among the limited number of characters who are at least half-decent to Dumbo, and prove to easily be the most clever creatures in the movie. Though stereotypically "Black" and led by a crow originally named "Jim", they're glad to take a fellow outcast under their wing and help him to get back at his oppressors. With the exception of Cliff Edwards, the voice actors were also black singers and actors, the Hall Johnson Choir (you can also hear them all the way through The Green Pastures). All of them did a fantastic job on their song. Their live-action models for the animators were the black vaudeville duo Freddie and Eugene Jackson. When asked about it, Floyd Norman, one of Disney's first black animators, defended the characters as saying that they were never conceived as flat racist stereotypes so much as a spoof on popular black entertainers from the era, and that he personally never saw them as offensive. We like them and more importantly are encouraged to like them. In 2017, Whoopi Goldberg won a Disney Legend award and in her acceptance speech declared that the crows should become regular Disney characters and appear on merchandise; among other things, they sing the most iconic song and that everyone remembers.
  • "Song of the Roustabouts" portrays black laborers exploited by the circus putting up the circus tent. But the lyrics "We're happy-hearted roustabouts", given the downbeat tone of the song, is appropriately passive-aggressive and invites sympathy from the viewer.
• Fan-Preferred Cut Content: There was an unused song called "Are You a Man or a Mouse", which features Timothy encouraging Dumbo to try not to break down while showing some of his own characterization. Many fans of the movie feel that this should have been included in the final product because it gives the most memorable voiced character in the movie a show that isn't half bad. Also, less-screentime characters such as the crows got a song in the final product, while Timothy somehow didn't.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While the crows are rather divisive and polarizing characters in the United States, although loved and defended by fans, critics, historians, writers, pundits and other personalities, they're very popular in foreign audiences, especially in the Latin American, European and Japanese audiences, mainly because the visual pun is lost for non-English speaking audiences and, in the case of the Latin American public, because the translation adds a lot of localisms and regional accents in a very clever way. For instance, Jim/Dandy Crow has an Andalusian accent, courtesy of the memorable Florencio Castelló. Similarly, the rest speak in Mexican and Caribbean accents.
• Harsher in Hindsight: The clowns use a burning building in their routine for Dumbo. Just a few years after the film's release, close to 170 people were killed and hundreds more were injured in the Hartford circus fire in July 1944.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • One of the crows declares "I've seen a house fly!" Decades later, Disney would release a film whose entire plot revolves around a flying house.
  • At one point, one of the circus gorillas roars like Tarzan. Disney would make their own adaptation of Tarzan in 1999, 58 years later.
• It Was His Sled: Dumbo can fly. It's not revealed until late in the film, and it was initially viewed as a massive twist. The initial trailer did not depict or hint at Dumbo flying, hiding it to the point where a list of songs placed on the screen referred to "When I See an Elephant Fly" as "I've Seen Everything". Nowadays, viewing audiences don't even think of this moment as a twist at all, potentially making it a bigger example of this than the trope namer released the same year. Plenty of covers, posters and promotional material feature him flying front and centre, including a ride at every Disney theme park resort in the world bluntly titled Dumbo the Flying Elephant.
• Memetic Mutation: "Seeing the pink elephants" has been a popular way to describe someone on drugs ever since. Subverted, however, as at the time the movie was made it was already an idiom for someone being too drunk to carry on a conversation with you.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Many of the Crows' defenders consist of actual African-American historians, artists and personalities such as the aforementioned Whoopi Goldberg and Floyd Norman.
• Moe: The innocent baby elephant Dumbo, despite being mocked for his appearance in-universe, has a blatant Ridiculously Cute Critter design and his large ears only make him cuter (and not in an Ugly Cute way). Being also the Disney Trope Codifier for The Woobie adds to this trope.
• Narm: If you pay close attention during the scene when Timothy washes Dumbo's clown makeup (before "Baby Mine"), a few of Dumbo's offscreen sobs clearly sound like that of an adult.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • The Stork who delivers Dumbo is the reason the Disney crew quickly grew to love Sterling Holloway's voice and he became a regular staple of the studio's work, most notably as Winnie the Pooh.
  • The gorilla only appears for six seconds, but hilarious gag of his monstrous facade dropping when he accidently breaks a cage's bar certainly makes him memorable.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • The Matriarch elephant's voice (Verna Felton) is more recognizable for iconic Disney characters like the Queen of Hearts, Fairy Godmother, and of course Flora the Good Fairy.
  • Sterling Holloway is in a small role as Mr. Stork before more famous roles such as the Cheshire Cat, Kaa, and especially Winnie the Pooh.
  • Before his iconic role in Song of the South, James Baskett voices the fat crow in this film.
• Signature Scene:
  • Dumbo's birth, followed by him sneezing to reveal his giant ears.
  • For the Rail Enthusiast, Casey Junior's iconically catchy musical number coupled with him chugging across the countryside.
  • "Baby Mine".
  • The "Pink Elephants On Parade" sequence, shortly after the previous song.
  • Dumbo flying, and by extension "When I See an Elephant" as well as its reprise.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Being Disney's first film set in the Present Day as of its release, it's an odd mix of a contemporary piece to The '40s when it came out (1941), but also saddled with many references to The '30s.
  • One of the biggest hints that the film is actually set in The '40s is at the end, where the Spinning Newspaper is dated "Thursday, March 13, 1941", and includes side stories titled "Britain in Greatest Offensive" and "Berlin Attacked as London Spurred By Lend-Lease Bill".
  • The '30s, meanwhile, spill over into the very beginning of the next decade by way of several references, including one in the very first song, "Look Out for Mr. Stork"; the singers casually mention "those quintuplets", a reference which at the time would not be necessary to explain, because it is very clearly a reference to the Dionne Quintuplets, five identical Canadian girls who became enormous celebrities during the Depression years simply by virtue of being quintuplets (and even that is dated, as quintuplets would hardly impress anyone today because nonuplets have since been born). The North American media obsessively covered the Dionne story for years (partly because it gave them an excuse to avoid any controversial economic or political topics that might have offended people in what was at the time a fairly heated social climate), with the result that the girls' entire childhood and adolescence became world news. You probably only remember the Dionne Quintuplets today if you're a Thirties buff, or a student of old newsreels, or maybe if you saw that South Park episode that subtly parodied the phenomenon with a big fuss in the town over five identical Romanian girls.
  • There are also some instances that transcend any specific decade. The song "When I See an Elephant Fly" includes the line "I heard a fireside chat", referring to then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his thirty-some radio broadcasts he gave from taking office in 1933 until near the end of World War II in 1944. Also, the film's traditional American-style circus setting eventually looked increasingly antiquated as the years went by, as premium human-centric circuses a la Cirque du Soleil gained popularity and animal rights groups waged war against perceived cases of animal abuse, followed by the 2017 closing of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. As a result, the 2019 live-action remake went the Period Piece route.
• Values Dissonance:
  • "Song of the Roustabouts" portrays Black laborers (who are literally faceless) putting up the circus tents with lyrics like "we work all day, we work all night, we never learned to read or write" - and a later line "grab that rope, you hairy ape". Even if they aren't intended to be Black, the darker color palette used for the song makes them look Black.
  • Even if they're decent by the standards of the time, the crows still fall into this. The similarity of their appearance and mannerisms— whether intentional or not— to blackface minstrel-show performers is off-putting to most modern viewers. And because of that, they are easily the most notorious part of the movie.
  • There's also the fact that even though the mistreatment of Dumbo and his mother is played for pathos, the movie never questions the system of animals being forced to perform in circuses in the first place. The happy ending just has Dumbo as the new star of the circus. Nowadays, traditional circuses have come increasingly under fire for their animal cruelty and either been driven out of business or phased out their animal acts (e.g. the Ringing Bros. and Barnum and Bailey Circus, which temporarily closed in 2017, then was revived in 2023 without animals). This change is reflected in Dumbo (2019), which has an Adaptational Alternate Ending where the circus stops using wild animals, with Dumbo and his mother released into the wild in their native Asia.
• The Woobie:
  • Dumbo is openly mocked and given a horrifically Embarrassing Nickname from mean lady elephants about four minutes after being born, gets the same treatment from a bratty kid (one with big ears, no less), his mother gets sent to jail for justifiably attacking said kid (not to mention how much worse the attack from a fully grown elephant could have been), he gets relegated to clown duty after getting stage fright on his first big act (which the other elephants denounce him for), and becomes accidentally drunk. He only has one friend in Timothy Mouse to help him get through this, and said friend can't make everything better. When does all this happen? Over the expanse of probably about a week, starting from the day he's born. Dumbo just may be Disney's biggest woobie ever, and you know that's saying enough.
  • Mrs. Jumbo, whose sufferings we don't get to see, is kept in solitary confinement, unable to defend or even comfort her son through all the degradation he goes through, except for the one time Timothy brings Dumbo to visit her. Even then she can't even see him, only cradle him with her trunk through the bars of her prison. And what would have happened to her if Dumbo hadn't become a star in the end? The best case scenario would be that she's just being confined for observation, pending examination by a vet to make sure she's healthy and was just protecting her child. But in the worst case scenario, she could have been destroyed at the end of the tour.
    • She's also visibly distraught when the storks seem to have passed her up at the beginning, until she gets a late delivery the next day. Any woman who has miscarried or had difficulty conceiving can relate to how she was feeling.

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