“Dumbo”

***

(PG, 1:52)

The original “Dumbo” was released in 1941 as war was breaking out across the globe. Crafted as a simpler Disney fable after “Fantasia” disappointed at the box office, “Dumbo” — only 64 minutes in length — took flight just as far more chilling creations were taking to the air.

“Dumbo” is alight again in Tim Burton’s somber and sincere live-action remake of the animated classic. Burton has refashioned “Dumbo” as a sepia-toned show-business parable tailored to more animal rights-sensitive times.

Burton’s “Dumbo” inevitably lacks much of the magic of the original, but it has charms of its own, starting, naturally, with the elephant in the room. Of all the CGI make-overs, this Dumbo is the most textured, sweetest and most soulful of creatures. Like the original, he doesn’t speak and trips over his floppy ears, but with a sneeze, he is sent airborne, transforming him into one precious pachyderm.

The film opens in 1919 on the heels of World War I. Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) returns from war, minus an arm, to his two children, Milly (Nico Parker) and Joe (Finley Hobbins). The children’s mother died while Holt was at war.

The traveling circus where the Farriers make their home has fallen on hard times. Its owner, Max Medici (Danny DeVito, spectacular), has sold off the horses that Holt rode in his act. Medici sinks all his remaining money into an elephant that he hopes will revive the circus, only to feel swindled when she produces a droopy-eared offspring.

Of course, Dumbo’s stock rises once he does, too, and Medici’s suddenly sensational circus quickly attracts the interest of a much more big-league circus impresario, V.A. Vandevere (a devilishly slick Michael Keaton), who brings Medici’s whole circus to his Coney Island kingdom as a means of luring Dumbo away and dispensing, like a vulture capitalist, with the rest.

Thus the film becomes a grand corporate satire, but it is wondrous when Dumbo takes flight. Burton’s camera feels genuinely mesmerized at his elephant’s magic act. When Dumbo soars, it’s clear that Burton believes in the ability of a beautiful oddity to transcend.