Pinocchio

Pinocchio

A wooden puppet embarks on a thrilling adventure to become a real boy.

  • Released:
  • Runtime: 120 minutes
  • Genre: Adventure, Family, Fantasy
  • Stars: Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Tom Hanks, Luke Evans, Cynthia Erivo, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Keegan-Michael Key, Lorraine Bracco, Giuseppe Battiston, Sheila Atim, Hannah Flynn, Kyanne Lamaya, Jaquita Ta'le, Lewin Lloyd, Angus Wright, Jamie Demetriou
  • Director: Robert Zemeckis
 Comments
  • CinemaSerf - 9 December 2023
    Pinocchio
    I think Robert Zemeckis was maybe trying to get closer to the original Disney version of this film from 1940, but it doesn't really work. Tom Hanks sparingly takes on the human role of the carpenter "Geppetto" who longs for a son. He crafts this wooden replica and magic takes an hand with the benevolent "Blue Fairy" turning him into the young "Pinocchio". This youngster's is a bit spoiled and is soon bored with the routine of his life at home and at school and before long is tempted by a visiting (and well paying) theatrical show who take him from the safety of "Geppetto" and, accompanied by narrator/conscience "Jiminy Cricket" we now see the boy experience adventures that demonstrate the venality, cruelty and selfishness of humanity as he gradually starts to yearn for the safety of his home and his father. This perilous journey does, however, help him grow. He begins to mature and discover the difference between right and wrong, truth and lie whilst meantime the old man is despairing and sets off to find him. Can they ever meet again? The animation is really enjoyable here, but the characterisations are all a bit feeble. The gist of this story has a darkness to it and that is lacking here. Granted, this isn't the easies of stories to Disneyfy with much more substance to the malevolence of the plot, but here we seem to have something that falls between two stools. It's not menacing, nor is it a "cartoon", it's just a bit soulless. Still, it's not unwatchable and if it encourages youngsters to read the book or check out a few of the grittier adaptations of the Collodi novel, then all's good.
  • elitegt - 21 July 2023
    Genuine Review
    I watched the 1940 Pinocchio for the first time and immediately saw the live action the next day. I was a little sad to see that the new Pinocchio had a 5.1/10. I can without a doubt say that the reviews from everyone is not justified.

    This is a really good movie. The animation is superb. Tom Hanks gave a great performance. Was it different from the 1940's story. Yes. But the 1940's story isn't even the original story from the book. I also loved the hidden Easter Eggs in movie. It was refreshing seeing some of the changes. Anyways. This was a really good movie. Enjoyed the voice actors and would watch this movie again.
  • classicsoncall - 22 March 2023
    "You will always be my real boy."
    As with most older movie fans, I saw the original animated version as a kid when my parents brought me to a theater. Even then it would have been quite a few years after its release date in 1940. I remember very little about it not having seen it since, so I'll take the word of those who say this one is a pretty accurate remake of the original combining live action with animation. For this viewer, it was an entertaining picture with a warmhearted performance by Tom Hanks as Mastro Geppetto. The animation aspects in quite a few instances were quite clever, particularly with Pinocchio and Jiminy Cricket. The character of Jiminy Cricket was created by Italian writer Carlo Collodi for his 1883 children's book "The Adventures of Pinocchio", so the character has a long history predating Disney.
  • c_navarrete - 25 December 2022
    A worse version of the original
    I didn't want to write a review about this cause what is they left to say that hasn't been said before. Like every other live action remake is war worse and betrays the original purpose of the story. Also it is too longgggg to the point where I evened thought about not finishing it which I hate to do. Plus the main character pinocchio looks like my worst nightmare. That was the funniest part of the movie quiet honesty. The songs are completely forgettable expect when you wish you upon a star. Which they barely even play. Anyway just watch the original for a true pinocchio movie instead of wasting your time on this.
  • Johnny_West - 6 December 2022
    Gumpetto & the magic wood
    Tom Hanks drags out his standard tried and true Forest Gump character one more time. He plays Gepetto, but he should be called Gumpetto so that his Forest Gump character can get another notice.

    The story is as boring as Pinnochio. I never really got the whole point of a guy made out of magic wood who cannot tell a lie. It seems to me that if Forest Gump can make a magical puppet that can be like his son, why focus on the negative?

    Enjoy the puppet, take Pinnocchio to Disney World, let him see "Its a Small World" ride and see all the hundreds of puppets that are there. Would he want to stay? Maybe he did not care for Gumpetto that much? Like "Thanks for the magic wood, but I gots to move on now."
  • worldsworstwryter - 6 November 2022
    2D Animation doesn't need remade.
    With so many more obvious problems in these Disney remakes, I didn't think I'd be particularly worked up about the pacing of all things, but wow the first half hour of this film is a slog to get through!

    Taking off the credits, the film is roughly 1 hr 30 minutes, and it takes about a half hour or so just to get out of Geppetto's house! That means, give or take a few minutes, the first third of the movie is in just one location! This is meant to be a fun filled adventure, not a confined thriller, so why did they keep us stuck in the house for so long?

    Anyway, apart from that, the other problems are just the same things as all the rest of the Disney remakes; overuse of terrible CGI, removing all the charm from the 2D animation, weird and pointless changes to sanitize the original story, and the fact that they should never have been made in the first place, because old animation is not a 'problem' that needs to be fixed.

    It's not the worst thing I've ever seen though, the actors are fine, the story (or what's left of it) is kind of nice, and kids might like it, although they might also end up pretty bored at first.

    Also, this isn't a criticism, but why does Jiminy's face remind me so much of a brussels sprout? I've never seen a cricket that close before, so I guess maybe they really do just look like that...
  • davidmvining - 20 October 2022
    All wrong, but pretty
    This cannot be Robert Zemeckis' last film. He has to make Here. Even if Here is terrible, at least his last film won't be Pinocchio. There is something wrong at the heart of this film. There's also a lot wrong all around it, but at its heart it seems too self-aware for the kind of lightly fantastical fairy tale that Pinocchio actually is. That is evident in the film's opening moments, and weird choices continue to just pile up as the thing goes on. The choices are so off, it almost makes me think that Zemeckis intentionally sabotaged the film after a certain point in production. That's probably not it. It's just that Zemeckis is so much more than this material.

    I actually have watched this twice now. The first was a few weeks ago. I watched it over two days, not really sure of why I was so off-put by the whole thing, only getting an idea by the end. I couldn't bring myself to write about it because the whole thing depressed me, particularly from the viewpoint of Robert Zemeckis' career. This is Zemeckis' becoming a tool of Disney just to keep working at the production level he wants to work. Instead of making smaller films, he can't walk away from giant budgets even if it's remaking a beloved animated film in live action. So, I set out to watch it again, and I watched the original right before, just to get a better handle on certain narrative decisions.

    I think there are two big reasons changes were made. The first was to make certain plot turns that seem somewhat like haphazard coincidences more purposeful. The second is designed to deepen character. Regarding the first, I'm not entirely in opposition to all of these changes, especially in concept. There are moments in the original that feel completely random to get Jiminy Cricket (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) back with Pinocchio (Benjamin Ainsworth), for instance. However, these changes also introduce more haphazard coincidence, as much as it takes out, so it's something of a wash. In terms of the character stuff, though, I question the introduction of it all.

    This is evident from the opening scene that gives Geppetto (Tom Hanks) a sad backstory as a widower and father to a son who had died at some point in the past. This is an odd scene, in no small part because it's actually a song that Hanks mostly just mumbles through (perhaps one of the lingering effects of Tom Hooper's Les Miserables), and it's imparting this deep sense of pathos at the beginning of the film. It undermines the fairy tale aspect of the story that the film never gets rid of. It's an approach to introduce psychological complexity for a relatively minor character in what is ultimately a much simpler story about growing up to be a good boy. I can excuse make all day for Robert Zemeckis, but this feels like something he would introduce himself. He's got a history of things like Flight that take characters seriously and deep-dives into them. It's wrong for this movie, though.

    This also extends to a new character introduced, Fabianna (Kyanne Lamaya), a puppeteer in the traveling theater run by Stromboli (Giuseppe Battiston) who befriends Pinocchio. She's disabled, with some mechanical contraption on her bum leg that she pirouettes on. I really don't understand the introduction of this character from a narrative point of view. I don't see what she adds. She's some kind of support to Pinocchio, but that's at the expense of Jiminy. Seriously, Jiminy is under a glass jar for almost a third of this movie, unable to interact with Pinocchio. It's so weird. She seems to be a proxy for Jiminy in the middle section of the film, and it dilutes the key relationship in Pinocchio's story.

    Now, in terms of the smaller changes around plot convenience, I just want to highlight two moments. The first is early when Geppetto sends Pinocchio to school. In both versions, Jiminy sleeps through the goodbye and then tries to catch up. In the original, he happens across Pinocchio with Honest John as they go off to meet Stromboli. It's pure coincidence. In this, Jiminy meets a seagull, Sofia (Lorraine Bracco), who happened to see what direction Pinocchio went off, and she carries Jiminy to Pinocchio. So, it takes a quick little moment of coincidence and gives it a more opulent and visual way to accomplish the same thing. Is that worthwhile? To answer that is to address the nature of the story.

    Pinocchio is a fairy tale. It's a light, fun movie with some elements of danger to test our main character as he grows and becomes a real boy. Do we need really tight narrative construction? I don't want to say no to that, but it doesn't feel necessary to this kind of story. So, the additions in general don't bug me, but they do feel extraneous and excuses to use special effects in Zemeckis' trademark loose style. There's one later that feels really off, though.

    In the original, Pinocchio escapes from Stromboli and meets up with Honest John again who connects him with the Coachman who then takes him to Pleasure Island. In this new one, Pinocchio runs away, newly reconnected with Jiminy who got out of his glass jar through pure coincidence, and gets swept up by the Coachman (Luke Evans) in a net. Coincidence. The point though is different. It's supposed to be an evolution of Pinocchio's journey. Having Pinocchio listen to Honest John again is something of a repeat of his first mistake. Suddenly finding himself in the Coachman's vehicle, surrounded by kids who sing a song about how Pinocchio needs to go, is Pinocchio falling to a different kind of outside influence: peer pressure. However, it's built wrong. Everything moves too fast to really settle into the idea, and the extreme coincidence of Pinocchio just getting picked up is extreme and weird.

    And then we get to Pleasure Island. In the original, the boys (all boys) drink something that's obviously actual beer and smoke cigars while destroying some property. In the new one, the boys and girls drink what is explicitly root beer, there isn't a cigar in sight, and they destroy everything while riding a roller coaster like thing that takes them all the way through the park while Luke Evans pops up out of the nearby floorboards to hand them more root beer. The edges have been sanded down, and the glossiness upped through special effects. It all feels wrong. Everything in this movie, even things meant to improve things narratively, feel wrong.

    Nothing in this movie works except, most of the time, its visuals. Especially during the daylight scenes, this movie is often beautiful. Bright with colors that really pop off the screen, almost like old-school Disney animation. And that's really it. Hanks is barely in the film, so his efforts at giving Geppetto pathos are wasted. The plot is something of a jumble, somewhere between fairy tale sensibilities and an effort to update it. The knowing self-awareness, especially around Jiminy and the clocks in Geppetto's shop that are all Disney references, undermine everything around them. The effort to make Pleasure Island safe for modern child audiences (an unnecessary move) grinds down the point of the whole episode. Everything feels wrong, and that's just simply something I wouldn't expect from Robert Zemeckis.

    This is just outright depressing. Pretty, but depressing.