

This modern version updates some of the songs and jokes (including Keegan-Michael Key enjoyably blustering some pointed commentary on what it means to chase fame in 2022) and adds a smattering of new characters.
STORYBOOK PINOCCHIO STORY PLUS
The Absolute Best TV Shows on Disney Plus.More People Should Watch The Scariest Film on Disney Plus, If You Dare.It's all a bit patronizing, and takes away from the misguided marionette's flawed relatability.

But in the new version, Pinocchio is disquieted by other juveniles' delinquency, while Jiminy is only torn from his do-gooding task when he's attacked by the film's antagonists. Although the new version also disinfects the original film's characters, who were far from perfect: the cartoon Pinocchio was endearingly happy to be led astray, embracing sensual pleasures with gusto while Jiminy Cricket bailed on Pinoke more than once. Gone are the original's eyebrow-raising puppet burlesque show, underage cigar smoking and dubious ethnic stereotypes. It has to be said that the new version, directed by Robert Zemeckis, plays some things safe.

Compared to mainstream films like, for instance, that other film in which Tom Hanks builds a surrogate son, Pinocchio offers a frisson of demented imagination and a heady whiff of the unexpected that you're usually more likely to find in a film from Japanese animators Studio Ghibli, like Ponyo or My Neighbor Totoro, than a Disney film. It feels unmoored from the all-too-familiar conventions of Western storytelling (y'know, the hero's journey and Save the Cat and all those narrative conventions that rob most movies of their power to surprise). And unlike in the original film, we never see villainous talking fox Honest John interact with any humans, so it isn't clear whether animals can even talk to people.īut if you haven't overthought Frozen after watching it three times in a week, are you even a parent?ĭon't get me wrong, the randomness and surrealness of this weird storybook world is one of the best things about any version of Pinocchio. Geppetto is surprised to see his creation walking and talking, and the puppet is billed as a remarkable sensation when he's pushed on stage at a traveling theater, but various other people interact with him like he's entirely unremarkable. In fact, the new film lurches into this awkward space where it isn't clear if Pinocchio is unusual at all. If it's a world in which sentient creatures are commonplace, that surely takes away from Pinocchio's uniqueness. Not only does Pinoke hang out with a talking grasshopper, but also a singing fox and, for some reason, a sexy goldfish. But the world into which Pinocchio emerges makes zero sense. The main story about a talking puppet makes sense in a fairy tale-logic sort of way - a wish is made, it comes true, any kid can understand that - and a subtly suggested new backstory about Geppetto's grief for his lost family actually adds a new dimension of poignancy to his yearning wish. The film opens with an animated cricket narrating the story (in Joseph Gordon-Levitt's ripe accent), only to get into a meta argument with himself about being a narrator. There are no strings on this marionette in the shape of a little boy, but naive Pinocchio is soon pulled in all directions as he's seduced into various unsavory adventures. Hanks plays Geppetto, a shambling woodcarver in a bustling Italian village who wishes on a star and gets more than he bargained for when his newest puppet comes to life. So Pinocchio is the latest Disney classic to be remade for modern sensibilities and effects, following The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King, Tim Burton's Dumbo and more (with a new Little Mermaid on the way). You can watch the original on Disney Plus, but while it smoothed over the nastiness of Carlo Collodi's original 1880s novel it still included a few quirks that will leave modern audiences wincing. Uncle Walt's second animated feature after Snow White, Pinocchio was the first animated film to win an Oscar, and remains a visual treat. 9).ĭisney's version specifically remakes the House of Mouse's 1940 film. It isn't showing in theaters, and the suits at Disney have rather strangely chosen to drop the film when summer vacation is already over, but they have managed to release their version before Guillermo del Toro's stop-motion Pinocchio tells the same story (in theaters Nov. Reuniting the Forrest Gump team of Tom Hanks and director Robert Zemeckis, the 2022 Pinocchio is streaming on Disney Plus today, Sept. A brand new remake of the classic Disney animation sanitizes the aging cartoon's more dubious elements, but still manages to be bizarre as all get-out - and in fact, this awkward mishmash of digital effects and live action adds new levels of weird. I don't know how long it's been since you saw Pinocchio, but it is super weird.
