The output of Walt Disney Animation Studios–currently totaling 54 full-length films–has been cherished by audiences young and old for almost 80 years. In this weekly online feature, arts and entertainment editor Nathan Tucker will review and rank each of them.

I had remembered Dumbo as a cute, inspiring motion picture. But the first thing that struck me on repeat viewing was how harsh and merciless the film’s world is. Sure, Dumbo unlocks his potential at the film’s end, but for what? To be peddled from town to town by the heartless circus that ruined his infancy? To share stardom with the elephant matriarchs who shunned him? To bomb Europe, as a dated WWII magazine cover in the final montage jokingly implies? Make no mistake: behind that small, sweet elephant is a big, scary world.

There is a great story somewhere in Dumbo about the individual rising above their society through self-confidence, but the film itself does not quite crack it. Instead, it plays a cruel game to see how much abuse it can heap on the eponymous elephant before slapping a happy ending on at the last minute. While there is nothing wrong with a film that shows cruelty as it is, Dumbo’s constant stream of sadness makes watching it an ordeal.

When viewed next to the solid character work in Pinocchio, the cast of Dumbo comes off as shallow. The mute lead is appropriately cute and mopey, but not much else. The supporting cast include the aforementioned elephant bullies, a generic loving mother, sadistic clowns, a bargain bin Jiminy Cricket, and literalizations of the “Jim Crow” stereotype that blight an otherwise enjoyable finale.

Dumbo was made on the cheap to recoup losses from Pinocchio and Fantasia. It shows. The backgrounds are muted, the animation has lost some fluidity, and the color palate is drab. Dumbo is by no means void of visual appeal–the character designs, in particular, are masterful–but it suffers in comparison to the no-expense-spared detail of Disney’s previous features.

The unqualified highlight of the film is the dazzling/disturbing “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence. Turning the limited production values into an asset, “Pink Elephants” wastes five minutes of a sixty minute film on irrelevant hallucinations in bright lysergic Technicolor. The resulting swirl of shifting elephants is like nothing else released at the time and remains eye-catching today.

But one remarkable sequence cannot lift Dumbo above its overall mediocrity. Everything in the film is just decent enough to pass muster, to remain enjoyable without being actually impressive. Dumbo may fly–but it never soars.

The List:

1. Fantasia
2. Pinocchio
3. Dumbo
4. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs