Dumbo

Alcohol is the solution to all life’s problems, as long as you can survive a psychedelic heffalump turbo nightmare that’s far trippier than you remember in this, Disney’s 4^th feature length animation. Telling the story of Dumbo, an almost intolerable cute elephant born with ears so big they can be used as his own personal blanket, this follows him as he is ridiculed by the other elephants at the circus he’s born in, before being made a clown, befriending a mouse, getting hammered and meeting the most stereotypically racist crows ever drawn (“We’s all fixin’ to help ya’.”) Whilst much of Dumbo hasn’t aged well – the faceless black slavehands are another nod to Uncle Walt’s personal beliefs – and the plotting is far too fast for its own good, but the animation is vibrant and the characters beyond memorable. And if you can sit through Dumbo’s mother cradling her baby to sleep through the bars of the trailer she’s confined in without getting something stuck in your eye then you don’t have a soul.

Choose film 6/10