Disney’s original 1941 Dumbo was only 64 minutes long, making it Disney’s shortest theatrically released animated feature. Burton’s retelling is almost double that at 112 minutes. Not surprisingly, many critics have pointed out that the effective simplicity of the source material is lost because this new version is trying to unnecessarily complicate the plot in order expand the narrative’s duration.

Disney’s live-action Dumbo is the latest in the studio’s ongoing reimaginings of their classic animated features -- and with Aladdin and The Lion King due out later this year and many more in the pipeline, there’s no sign they’ll be stopping anytime soon (I can’t help but wonder how they’ll turn their funny animal features like Chicken Little or Zootopia into live-action.)

Disney’s reimaginings run the gamut from more or less following the original films’ templates (Beauty and the Beast or Cinderella) to tossing out everything save the title (Pete’s Dragon). Dumbo director Tim Burton’s no stranger to reimaginings himself, with new takes on movies (Planet of the Apes), TV shows (Dark Shadows) and even classic stories (Alice in Wonderland) that range from brilliant to near-misses, to “what was he thinking?”

So where does his Dumbo stand on the twin scales of fidelity and imagination? In my humble estimation, midpoint fidelity-wise; in terms of imagination… this is peak Burton. His affinity for weirdoes and outsiders (Edward Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, etc.) is well-known and on full display in his Dumbo. While the animated original’s focus was on its animal characters with human beings kept in the periphery, in this version the big-eared baby elephant is surrounded by a constellation of (with one or two exceptions) big-hearted humans. In other words, no haughty matronly elephants, no cocky circus mouse, and most definitely no minstrel show crows.