'Pinocchio' Review: Disney's Wooden Remake
By: John Anderson (WSJ)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Among the long-term relationships wearing out their welcome in Disney's new "Pinocchio" is that of director Robert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks, who plays the dithering Geppetto in this live-action remake (and performed, famously, in the Zemeckis movies "Forrest Gump," "Cast Away" and "The Polar Express"). A second would be Disney's devotion to its own catalog, which it recycles with self-referential abandon: When Geppetto's workshop goes haywire—a scene lifted, like so many, from the 1940 cartoon—who should pop out of the cuckoo clocks but Cinderella, the Seven Dwarves and Woody and Bullseye from "Toy Story." Green is the dominant hue in the Wonderful World of Color.
The other love affair being revisited is that between film directors and the Pinocchio story itself, about the puppet who comes to life and gains wisdom about the world. It’s been adapted multiple times with mixed success, including the Disney animated classic; the Roberto Benigni calamity of 2002; the Matteo Garrone version of 2019 (with Mr. Benigni as Geppetto); and the yet-to-be-seen Guillermo del Toro stop-motion adaptation, which promises to be deliciously grotesque and has been stringing along Del Toro lovers for years. (Advance photos make the Mexican director’s Pinocchio look like he was carved out of pine with a jackknife.) It will be here by the holidays, an almost-guaranteed gift.
Meanwhile, Disney+ is presenting a remake that is close to a frame-by-frame reiteration of what is probably not the fan favorite among classic Disney fairy tales, though the studio’s urge to produce live-action remakes seems irresistible, like cash. (Were the live-action “Lion King” or “Beauty and the Beast” an improvement on anything?) Disney’s 1940 “Pinocchio” was softened and brightened considerably from the original—which the Risorgimento-era man of letters Carlo Collodi began serializing in 1880—yet is one of the grimmer films in the catalog. Upon a revisit, the reasons are obvious: It’s dark, literally, despite an often-glorious Technicolor palette. Its world is full of grasping predators, both human and animal. And Pinocchio’s problems are of his own making: Unlike Bambi, whose mother is shot by hunters, or Dumbo, whose mother is abused by circus villains, Pinocchio brings his woes upon himself—skipping school to follow the Fox and Cat to Stromboli’s puppet show, or getting on that dubious boat to Pleasure Island, where young boys are given beer and cigars, turned into donkeys and trafficked to the salt mines.
Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) PHOTO: DISNEY
It’s Pinocchio who doesn’t listen to his conscience—a job that’s been outsourced to Jiminy Cricket. And Pinocchio who neglects what the Blue Fairy has told him he has to do, if he wants to be a real boy.
Add the insipid voice (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth now, Dickie Jones then) and Pinocchio is hard to warm to. While the non-Disney versions of the story have made the physical manifestation of Pinocchio a matter of interpretive virtuosity, the Zemeckis version features a computerized title character who’s a duplicate of the cartoon version. Jiminy Cricket, voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, may look now like a mutant cockroach, but he’s the same flustered, cracker-barrel philosopher he was in the past. Keegan-Michael Key is Honest John, the fox; Cynthia Erivo is the Blue Fairy, and Jaquita Ta’le is a new character, the puppeteer behind Sabina, one of Pinocchio’s co-stars in the exploitative marionette show run by Stromboli (Giuseppe Battiston).
Mr. Zemeckis, who cowrote the screenplay with Chris Weitz, adds some depth, albeit obliquely, to the old Disney version (and the Collodi tale, too, for that matter) by framing Geppetto as a grieving parent. It’s difficult to tell exactly what Mr. Hanks is muttering at the beginning of the film as Pinocchio is being put together, but Geppetto’s model for the puppet is a real boy, in a black-and-white photo; he loved Geppetto’s clocks, so they can never be sold. It’s only when Pinocchio disappears that Geppetto sells his handiwork, to finance a search that will lead to the belly of a sea beast and some special effects straight out of Cecil B. DeMille.
Cynthia Erivo as the Blue Fairy and Pinocchio (voiced by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) PHOTO: DISNEY
It’s a toss-up whether “Pinocchio” qualifies as a musical—the songs don’t dominate, though there are a couple of undistinguished new numbers and reprises of “I’ve Got No Strings,” “Hi-Diddle-Dee-Dee (An Actors Life for Me)” and “When You Wish Upon a Star.” The last of these might be a revelation to the youngest viewers, who’ll recognize the company theme music even if they never knew its source. They’ll be kept safe, of course—the cigars have certainly disappeared from Pleasure Island and they’re all drinking root beer, as we’re told several times lest there be a misunderstanding. There are no references to “Gypsies” or anything similarly offensive. And the resolution of the story, while not exactly a shock, is a departure from that of its ancestor, which in contrast now seems almost licentious. The Blue Fairy may have brought life to Pinocchio, but no one here is delivering anything particularly fresh. Or alarming. For that, we wait till Christmas.
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We are living in a much different world than that which produced Disney's classics. Those films should be preserved and re-released every 10 years or so to future generations of children. They are Disney's fine Jewels. We don't want remakes and we don't want commercialization of those timeless children's stories. Then again, I'm not running Disney nor am I the custodian of those very unique creations. Disney is in the hands of both profiteers and the woke, as evidenced by new "blue fairy."
Although I doubt I will watch the new Pinocchio movie, I found little in this review telling us why this one is no good in comparison to the 1940 cartoon, other than that the reviewer doesnt like live action remakes of feature length cartoons.
Not too many years ago there was a remake of Cinderella as a live action movie that I thought was terrific, maybe the best version ever. So you never know.
With all of the advancements in computer animation, how can they make Jiminy Cricket look worse than the original animated movie?
Haha....I kind of liked him in the original.
I prefer the original hand drawn animations of the original Disney movies to the CGI of today.
The ever so slight imperfections in animation made the characters seem far more real; than the overly clean cut sterile characters that computer animation creates.
It's almost like there's something missing from today's animation, despite all the technological advances....What could it be?
Looks like the upper part of his face has a mask on it. Weird
I've seen people put their covid masks up there. Very weird indeed!
I immediately thought of Jim Carrey in "The Mask" LOL