United States: PG

“You are probably too young to remember this,” I once told my high school students, “But Pixar used to make good movies.” Like many of the things I say to get a rise out of the youngsters, the statement had an element of hyperbole to it...

In a sense, viewing this iteration of Dumbo seated next to my mother was to come full circle: I watched the original film every single day for a month when I was a toddler - or so she tells me. Of course the Nietzschean themes of eternal recurrence and childlike wonder are so archetypal that the original film, a masterpiece written in the key of kitsch, uses them without so much as a wink or a nod to belie its philosophical quandary or artistic intent. This latest film had high standards to live up to.