The humor works for all ages, with a lot of it coming from Ewan McGregor’s Sebastian J. The scenes between father and son bring so much warmth, bringing out the best between David Bradley and Gregory Mann.įor how dark the film can get, it never feels like it talks down to the younger audience with del Toro not only understanding the youth as you can see from his previous films, but his collaboration with co-writer Patrick McHale, best known for his work on the animated series Adventure Time. But what the story is really about is imperfect fathers and imperfect sons with Geppetto learning to get over his grief and realizing that Pinocchio is not Carlo and given how spontaneous Pinocchio’s personality can be, it is his purity that gives everyone else an arc. Granted, those two aforementioned films are directly aimed at adults while Pinocchio is one for the whole family, Still, some will be surprised by how scary the film can be, not only from the well-designed creatures as you would expect from del Toro, but how monstrous humanity can be.įrom Ron Perlman’s fascist Podestà to Christoph Waltz’s ambitious Count Volpe, they are all about controlling the titular boy for either their selfish needs or their war-consuming country. Magically brought to life, the wooden boy now known as Pinocchio (also voiced by Mann) hopes to live up to his father’s expectations.Ĭonsidering the source material was published in 1883, transitioning the story to 1930s Fascist Italy feels like an extension of what del Toro’s exploration of fascism from The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth. Years later, with Italy now governed by the National Fascist Party, the still-broken Geppetto carves a wooden boy with the hope he will have his son again. The film opens with the woodcarving Geppetto (David Bradley) living peacefully in Italy with his son Carlo (Gregory Mann) during the outbreak of World War I leading to a family tragedy. Listen to the latest episode of the AIPT Movies Podcast! Revived by Netflix, which seems to be the home for directors like Martin Scorsese and Michael Bay to make the kind of films that major studios would not go for, del Toro presents a stop-motion musical that does not shy away from the darkness of the period it’s depicting. Whether or not those particular versions left an impression, they are nothing compared to what Guillermo Del Toro brings to Collodi’s story.Įssentially a passion project for del Toro, his Pinocchio had been in development hell for years as no studios were willing to provide financing. The second was Robert Zemeckis’ live-action remake of Disney’s 1940 animated Pinocchio, continuing Disney’s trend of recycling their beloved animations with more visual noise. The first was Pinocchio: A True Story, an animated Russian film that got a lot of notoriety for its infamous English dub featuring Pauly Shore. Sometimes it takes a puppet to remind us of what it truly means to be alive.ĭel Toro’s Pinocchio is now playing in select theaters and will be streaming on Netflix December 9th.This year marked the release of not one, not two, but three different versions of Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio. An auteur’s take on a classic story often highlights what makes that visionary director unique. It has taken over a decade for this incarnation to come to life and it will live on for many decades more. This, coupled with fantastic performances, meticulously designed characters and environments, make for a courageous story that the world needs to see. However, this isn’t “creepy edgy” Pinocchio actor Gregory Mann playing the puppet easily wins over the audience with his playful personality and sings with the voice of an angel.ĭel Toro’s Pinocchio has elements I’ve truly missed from earlier animated films: scary monsters, dastardly villains, and razor-sharp satire. The darker elements give emotional weight to the characters’ actions. The film embraces the macabre elements and dark humor of the original text without getting too gruesome. When Geppetto creates Pinocchio in a drunken rage– directly homaging Frankenstein’s monster–you know this is no ordinary fairy tale. However, woven within this fairytale structure is the oppressive weight of fascism and the bittersweet impermanence of life. Fans of the original story will recognize the familiar elements of a puppet boy, a cricket, a blue fairy, a sinister carnival, and getting swallowed by a giant fish.
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