I can’t actually believe that this new Dumbo is, in fact, a direct commentary on Disney’s far-reaching corporate tentacles and a pointed allegory of what happens when a little whiff of magic gets subsumed by big-money interests. And yet, here Dumbo is—a strange, lumbering, overcooked thing that takes a sweet, slender story about a flying elephant and blows it out to jumbo proportions, all while delivering a meta-text precisely about why such an undertaking is a misguided and morally corrupt idea. And it’s directed by, of all people, Tim Burton, a genuinely gifted visual stylist who conjured up some brilliant stuff before selling his talents, over and over, to the highest bidders. The result is a truly bizarre artifact in which artistic vision collides with corporate slurry-making, with both fully visible on screen. by Ned Lannamann