Dumbo lays an egg. (1 Viewer)

[Rain]

There have only been two people posting in this entire thread who have said anything more strongly negative than...

And those are the folks to whom I was referring.
To those who are enjoying the DVD, I think that's terrific...it's my personal favourite animated film of all time.

 

[Brian W.]

Hi, Carl,

I understand what you're saying, but at the time Dumbo was made, black-and-white absolutely was an artistic choice -- color had been in use in Disney animated films for at least 5 years. They could have animated Dumbo in black-and-white if they'd wanted.

It's not like I'm furious about Dumbo -- I'm sorry if it seems like I'm trashing it completely. That's not my intention. But I think some have the impression that myself and others are disappointed because it doesn't "look as good as Snow White." That's not it.

We're disappointed because it doesn't look even half as good as Snow White OR Pinocchio OR Fantasia OR the Technicolor shorts included with it -- all films that pre-date Dumbo. And it's not just the grain -- it's the faded colors and fluctuating light levels. It's not necessarily anyone's fault. It's entirely possible that the original negative for Dumbo no longer exists and that no really good prints could be found.

Dumbo looks OKAY. But most of the Disney animated features on DVD look great. To me, that makes Dumbo a disappointment.

And Rain, I am enjoying the DVD. I am totally thrilled to know I own the first 4 Disney animated features on DVD. But I would have been even more thrilled if Dumbo looked anywhere near as good as the other 3.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

We're disappointed because it doesn't look even half as good as Snow White OR Pinocchio OR Fantasia OR the Technicolor shorts included with it

For what its worth, I think Dumbo looks better than Pinocchio or either of the shorts on the disc. I agree that it does not look as good as Snow White or Fantasia.

Pinocchio suffers from the same problems that the Bambi laserdisc did. In the process of "cleaning it up", they significantly altered the "look" of the film and introduced some weird artifacts in the static backgrounds.

Honestly, except for that pesky censorship issue, the only Disney animated titles that I think were given short shrift video transfer-wise were The Black Cauldron and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. The next tier for me were ones where they altered the look of the film too much such as Pinocchio and Peter Pan (which I hope they fix with the SE). After that were the non-anamorphic widescreen titles. Just about everything else, Dumbo included, has been good to great. Oh, and just about everything else has not been as good as Snow White, either.

Regards,

 

[Patrick McCart]

We're disappointed because it doesn't look even half as good as Snow White OR Pinocchio OR Fantasia OR the Technicolor shorts included with it -- all films that pre-date Dumbo. And it's not just the grain -- it's the faded colors and fluctuating light levels. It's not necessarily anyone's fault. It's entirely possible that the original negative for Dumbo no longer exists and that no really good prints could be found.

The movie seems to have been color composited DIGITALLY from duplicate 3-strip negatives (not the originals).

Most of the pink elephants sequence looks perfect, so perhaps some parts were damaged while others were not...