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Pinocchio Movie Review

Pinocchio is a 2022 stop-motion animated fantasy film directed by Guillermo del Toro. It is one of the best movies of the year and del Toro’s greatest effort since ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’.

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“While you may have eternal life,

your loved ones, they do not“

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I was so excited to watch this movie judging by the amazing trailers, art concept and word of mouth. The fact that the movie is in Academy’s consideration and they are notorious for snubbing animation just goes to show that it is beloved and for many great reasons. In a year that saw Disney’s awful live-action remake, this version is not only obviously infinitely better, but it gives new life to this very old tale.

This is how you make a classic story unique and potent again – by respecting the source material, yet adding some interesting new elements that are fresh additions that work in unison with the original story instead of jeopardizing its integrity. This is one of the rare American adaptations that is actually quite faithful to the original novel not just in its much darker tone, but also in characters’ depictions.

Del Toro effortlessly adapted the source material to the big screen, but he particularly excelled at adding these new elements. The original story was written in 1883, but he smartly moved it to a later era, first in WWI and later in WWII. Let’s just say that there is Mussolini here and he shoots Pinocchio. This actually happens here and it’s this offbeat, weird reimagining that actually worked as it never sacrificed the major themes, but it built upon them even further.

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There is this anti-war sentiment throughout the second half, in particular focusing on the dangers of fascism. But the more interesting new elements are the fantastical ones. While the original story and even the Disney version aren’t littered with too many fantasy elements, this is a whole other story, quite literally in this instance. The fairy here isn’t your pretty Disney fairy, but a rather creepy wood sprite that is more reminiscent of angels.

But her counterpoint is this sphinx-like creature operating an hourglass, thus representing an Ancient Egyptian take on afterlife. This is where the movie reached the biggest heights as del Toro not only introduced these themes of life and death, humanity and the passing of time, but he genuinely explored them in this truly moving treatise on the importance of honoring your life and your loved ones while you still have the time.

And that brings me to that ending. Wow, what del Toro did in that final sequence is staggeringly beautiful and so touching that it genuinely made me tear up a bit. He twisted the formula on its head as he fittingly reimagined the conclusion in relation to that fantastical mechanic and created something that is bound to move everybody watching it. How Pinocchio himself did not become human, but he became mortal was fascinating and how the ending is ambiguous was quite poetic.

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Yes, there are still those elements of the boy misbehaving as in the book and learning to be better and there is also the idea of him wanting to fit in, but more so as his own self than as a “real boy”. Thus, the concept is modernized and changed in a brilliant way. Conformity and its dangers are tackled here wonderfully while the offbeat outcast narrative is perfectly fitting for this director’s sensibilities.

So, the protagonist worked and he was very well performed too. But the real character highlight is Geppetto himself. What they did with him was truly remarkable. He gets a whole new backstory where he lost his son accidentally in that very tragic sequence in the first act, thus we get the wonderfully handled subplot of him coping with his loss while learning to accept his new son as an entirely different person and not as a replacement to his diseased boy. That was a heartbreaking story that really moved me. David Bradley’s work in this role is incredibly emotive.

Ewan McGregor’s instantly recognizable voice gave a lot of warmth and humor to Sebastian J. Cricket. He looks great and he is such a wonderful sidekick as expected. Christoph Waltz is Count Volpe, this is a mixture of different villain characters from the original book, and he is just as menacing as you would expect of him. There is also the brief friend character in the form of this sweet boy who is the son of a fascist government official. His story ended up being quite dark. Another highlight is Spazzatura, the mistreated monkey assistant to Volpe. He ends up changing sides and I loved that development.

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This Pinocchio features some of the best stop-motion animation that I’ve ever encountered. Each and every puppet was incredibly lifelike in movements and emotiveness while the details are meticulous in clothing, facial features and, yes, wood. Pinocchio himself is actually made of wood unlike many previous iterations. He has a head that looks like a log and limbs that resembled twigs. He is easily breakable and as unpolished and imperfect as you can get. This perfectly fitted the story’s themes and messages and was such an amazing choice. Cricket also looked like a real cricket and this authenticity in each creature’s design made the movie more mature. The wood sprite and the sphinx are as stated above very creepy and the use of the color blue in the fantastical imagery was epic and gorgeous.

If there is one aspect that I did not quite love about this movie, it has to be the soundtrack. The Disney version had a couple of unforgettable classics, but this one does not. In fact, most of the numbers here are rather disposable, though they serve their purpose in terms of characterization and plot progression. Thankfully, the score is much better and quite beautiful at times while the directing from del Toro is masterful as is the writing of both the script and the dialogue. It is a dense script, but I would rather have a movie with more than few ideas, and honestly the film still felt coherent and streamlined in its vision, so the complexity of its plot and the overly extended runtime did not bother me at all.

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