Awfully Good: Operation Dumbo Drop

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Want to feel old? Disney released one of its strangest movies 25 years ago this week…

Operation Dumbo Drop (1995)

Director: Simon Wincer
Stars: Danny Glover, Ray Liotta, Denis Leary

Even as a kid I realized OPERATION DUMBO DROP was a really weird movie…and it hasn't gotten any better 25 years later.

Ray Liotta was caught off guard at the first meeting of the NARC International Fan Club.

You're already off to a rocky start just making a family-friendly comedy about the Vietnam War, one where the long-suffering Vietnamese people grow to love and respect American soldiers through fun, animal-related shenanigans. It's a fine, but not impossible line to walk (thinking of something like GOOD MORNING VIETNAM), but Disney's trademark bloodless, warm and fuzzy treatment of the subject matter sanitizes everything to the point of near-fantasy. At best, you end up with something that is just tonally bizarre, and really…was anybody even asking for this?

Then there's the entire hook of the film, which leaves you waiting almost two hours just to see a poor, terrified elephant get tossed out of a plane. This is one of those movies where I'd give anything to be a fly on the wall during the studio meeting where this was pitched. Can you imagine the ludicrous discussions they must've had before greenlighting this? The film also claims it was "inspired by a true story," but it's not that true. While the military did bring elephants to strategic villages during the war, they just flew the tranquilized animals inside of planes or in extreme cases, airlifted them via helicopter for part of the journey. I get that OPERATION DUMBO HANG doesn't have the same ring to it, but the thought of some Disney exec hearing the real story and being like, "F*ck that, make that son of a bitch skydive!" is kind of hilarious.

Everyone always fought over who got to be Wesley Snipes with their DROP ZONE cosplay.

Following in the Disney parent-murdering tradition of BAMBI and THE LION KING, OPERATION DUMBO DROP opens with a heartwarming scene of a young Vietnamese boy and his family peacefully riding their elephants through a beautiful river—before soldiers abruptly launch a mortar attack and murder nearly everyone, both humans and animal.

Cut to six years later and no-nonsense Green Beret Ray Liotta arrives in a remote village to replace a retiring Danny Glover (still too old for this shit!) and oversee a covert mountainside mission. He meets the villagers he will be living with…and then their elephant is immediately murdered by the North Vietnamese Army. (In case you're counting, that's at least two dead Dumbos in the first 15 minutes of this kids movie.)

Damn you, Disney! When will your blood lust ever be satiated?!

Naturally, the townspeople blame Liotta's arrival as bad luck and refuse to help the Americans, unless they can get them a brand new, better elephant by Friday. (Yes, there's actually a deadline for when they need to drop Dumbo.) Liotta and Glover have no choice but to put together a crack team for the job that includes COOL RUNNINGS' Doug E. Doug, playing a soldier who has a week left on his tour and doesn't want to take anymore dangerous risks, and Denis Leary as a requisitions officer who can make a phone call and find anybody anything in the middle of a war, including an elephant.

Liotta and Glover have decent chemistry as the constantly bickering officers, but the whole cast just completely phones it in, which is not surprising given the material. And it's not just me thinking this was a paycheck role for everyone involved. Even Denis Leary once admitted in an interview that he, Glover and Liotta all carried around pictures of the houses they were going to buy with their salaries to help get them through the shoot.

Just a friendly reminder that THE REF is a great movie.

So the movie follows the soldiers as they attempt to transport their elephant Bo Tat and the elephant's orphaned human friend Linh across the country. Their journey is filled with memorable moments, such as:

Ray Liotta having to give the elephant a tranquilizer pill…rectally.
The elephant waking up in the middle of an airplane flight and nearly killing everyone on board.
Denis Leary revealing that he slept with a general's wife, but only because he thought she was his daughter (?).
The movie constantly making a joke about Doug E. Dough being scared of dying because he's so close to going home. I remember laughing at this as a kid, but realize how messed up it is now.
A boat chase where the seasick elephant vomits everywhere.
A horrifying flashback where they reveal that Linh was the little boy from the opening scene (duh) and is only alive because Bo Tat rescued him from the attack and was shot multiple times saving him. They even show this. What is wrong with you, Disney?? Did someone not hug you enough as a child?
Danny Glover and Linh forming a touching father-son bond. I was really afraid Glover was going to adopt him at the end, like he did a year earlier in Disney's ANGELS IN THE OUTFIELD. However, thankfully, he simply leaves and abandons the kid to another 5+ years of living in an active warzone.

Every time Ray Liotta forgot his lines he secretly wished there was someone nearby with a famously good memory…

Because dropping a five-ton pachyderm out of a plane isn't exciting enough, the soldiers also have to disobey orders and finish their mission in secret when the general ends up canceling the operation. This means they have to steal a plane and jerry rig a parachute device for the animal by themselves, which of course leads to Bo Tat's chute not opening once in the air, which of course introduces the idea in young viewers that there's a chance the elephant they've grown to love might smash in to the ground at terminal velocity. And ironically, much to the detriment of the film's central conceit, while filming the drop sequence, the parachute really did fail to open multiple times, destroying three out of the six elephant dummies that were built. So please don't try this at home, kids.

At the end of the day, OPERATION DUMBO DROP follows pretty much all of the same beats you'd expect in a mid-90s Disney live action movie. It's a strange film, no doubt, but more competently made then a lot of the films we see in this column. I'm just still not sure who its intended audience is supposed to be. It has Dumbo in the title and a loveable creature, but a lesson on the Vietnam War is not exactly great entertainment for children. And adults will probably not find much to enjoy either in this lighthearted, whitewashed version of military history. Although it does have some interesting commentary on the nature of war and human conflict: