THE best film at the 1941 Academy Awards wasn’t Walt Disney’s animation of Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl’s book for children about the adventures befalling a baby circus elephant with ears so big that by flapping them, he could fly.

But it did get the award for Best Music.

Tim Burton’s live-action (with a generous sprinkling of CG additions) remake of this film is a 21st century rebuild of a story that stretches fantasy to delightful limits. It goes back to 1919, when, leaving his left arm on a French battlefield, Holt Farrier (Colin Farrell) returns to the Medici Bros. somewhat run-down travelling circus. His two children, Milly and Joe, have adopted the baby born to Mrs Jumbo who has been sold off to pay the debts weighing heavily on circus proprietor Max Medici (Danny DeVito), an old school showman who sees opportunity in everything that comes his way, including a flying elephant.

So begins a tale of circus, high finance, chicanery, romance and excitement for one and all. It’s politically correct before its time – no wild animal acts. For a movie in a circus setting, it looks very like a Broadway musical extravaganza. No matter. Its excitement and movement will cheer the hearts of young and old children alike provided, in the latter case, that they suspend their willingness to disbelieve what they are seeing.

The song “Baby of Mine” is the only non-narrative element from that original animation that carries over. It grabbed me this time as it did then – short, sweet, plaintive and memorable. Its impossible fundamental proposition may not fly in reality, but heck, this is a movie for kids, for whom all is forgivable.

At all cinemas