Dumbo

This is the quintessential Disney cartoon: brief, engaging, and profound – storytelling at its finest. Where "Snow White" doesn't make the cut (begins with rapidly developing melodramatic plot, pauses for most of an hour to allow forest creatures and midgets to play cute, and wraps up quickly), "Dumbo" spins its wise lesson with elegant timing and charming characters. We all can use that magic feather once in a while.

Disney had spent vastly more money than he'd planned on "Pinnochio" and "Fantasia", and got little of it back. "Dumbo", next off the rank, was made cheaply, quickly, without fuss. The result is simple but handsome. However handsome "Dumbo" looks, the animation is not very detailed, character design is hardly adventurous, the colours are few but bright, and in an hour it's over. It needn't be more than this, though: the story is far from complicated. It is, I'll admit, a story that has made me cry more than once; and in this instance I don't feel that I've been cheated into crying, because there really is something poignant and heartbreaking about this ugly duckling variant.

Like Hans Andersen, Disney has to pad the outfit a bit to make it fill the space available; yet, with the exception of the introductory bit with the storks, it doesn't feel like padding. In fact the most gratuitous piece of padding is the most necessary. I refer to the pink elephants sequence: a masterpiece of extended unreality (caused by such a tiny quantity of champagne!) which dazzles and sizzles and all but soars out of the screen. It's the sting in Dumbo's tail, and nothing produced since can match its verve.

Dumbo for me is a mini- masterpiece, with beautiful animation, an inspiring message and the sweetest elephant on screen. Dumbo is an elephant born with big ears, but who cares? True beauty comes from within. Dumbo's mother was like Bambi's mother, wise and memorable, and like Dumbo, misunderstood. The song "Baby of Mine" is so sad, that I always cry when I see this film because of it, Casey Jnr is very rousing and having a good laugh during "Seen an Elephant Fly". In regard to the crows, I saw nothing racist about them, they are stereotypical yes in a sense but in a positive way. Timothy the mouse is also memorable, a bit like Dumbo's conscience in a sense. For me, the highlight was Dumbo's dream, with the elephants dancing(a bit unrealistic but very imaginative), with ballet-like incidental music towards the end. I found the song "Elephants on Parade" catchy and I love how trippy the whole sequence is. In conclusion, I rejoiced when Dumbo conquered his fears, when it looked impossible. Great idea, Disney, about the flying elephant, although Don Bluth used a similar idea 50 years later for Pebble and the Penguin. A beautiful film, 10/10 Bethany Cox

I will never get how people still say that Bambi losing his mother is the worst in the classic disney films. For me it's Dumbos mother being imprisoned because she tries to protect her child. Yes, she's not dying, but it's still so very sad! And then we get this little adventure for Dumbo and his mousey companion. These two always remind me of Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket. The parade of the elephants - which Dumbo and Timothy Mouse are seeing when they're drunk (!) - is one of the craziest drug moments Disney ever did (probably only Alice in Wonderland can match it with it's weirdness). And it's so much fun to see Dumbo fly in the end and how he becomes a worldwide phenomenon after he got bullied around for such a long time.

All the other elephants shun Dumbo for his gigantic ears, and his mother has been locked up for protecting him, so he's all alone in the world... until Timothy Q Mouse shows up.

A beautiful piece of work. At just 60 mins, it is short and sweet. But it also contains some of Disney's best visual poetry. Dumbo's not saying a single word means his entire character is created through the physical. The entire opening sequence, till the gossipy elephants start talking, plays out without words, and its like the best silent movies. Simply beautiful.

Mrs Jumbo rearing up and destroying the big top to protect Dumbo from taunting kids is an incredible scene. Dumbo's mother spends the movie imprisoned in a carriage labelled "mad elephant" - and surely one of the most beautiful, heartbreaking scenes i've ever seen plays out when Dumbo and his mother have contact only by touching trunks, through the bars in the window of her cell. A beautiful sequence begins: the beautiful song "Baby Mine" plays as she cradles him in her trunk, and when Dumbo leaves she can't see him, and she stretches her trunk as far as she can out the window to try and reach him, and... oh, its too much!

The pink elephants sequence is as close to trippy Disney ever got - and its brilliant. One of the best, most inventive sequences in animation history. Great song, too.

Some terrific songs: Look Out for Mr Stork, Casey Junior (the train song), Pink Elephants, When I see an elephant fly and Baby Mine.

10/10. Timothy Q Mouse is a great character, the animation is so concise and perfect, great songs, the message that if you believe you can overcome your handicaps you will so inspiring and beautiful, and the movie so short and sweet it will forever retain its appeal.