Clocking in at a lean 64 minutes, Dumbo was one of Uncle Walt's most economical, cost-efficient features and a deliberate reaction to expensive flops like Pinocchio and Fantasia. The fact that it grossed more than those two movies combined tells its own story, and while the film is really little more than a series of Silly Symphony shorts strung together, there's not a duff one in the bunch.

If we had to pick a favourite, though, it would have to be the sublime `Pink Elephants On Parade' sequence, a seriously trippy headmash that shows the Disney animators at the peak of their powers - - and which probably gave an entire generation of children Nelly-shaped nightmares.

DVD Extras:

Disappointingly slight compared to the recent Bambi two-discer, with an oleaginous Celebrating Dumbo featurette and Michael Crawford's tremulous rendition of `Baby Mine' ramping the cheese factor up to puke-worthy levels. Best add-ons by a country mile are a brace of shorts from the mid-'30s: Elmer The Elephant, which shows a prototype Dumbo using his much-mocked trunk to extinguish a fire, and The Flying Mouse, which sees an early version of Timothy Mouse transformed into a bat by what looks suspiciously like Pinocchio's Blue Fairy.Otherwise it's the standard roster of sing-alongs, storybooks and animation galleries.