Pinocchio is a grim, high-stakes throwback. Not just to the original Disney film but to the early days of family entertainment, when Carolo Collodi wrote the novel and horror wasn’t sanded down for children.
The animation debut of Guillermo del Toro, this fantasy about a puppet doesn’t go easy on the violence. Though the story was written for families, that hasn’t stopped del Toro from sprinkling in his signature brand of terror and emphasizing the elements that made Collodi’s novel work.
As directed by del Toro and Mark Gustafson, this newest Pinocchio takes advantage of the fact that recent adaptations have been watered-down for kids, and catches us off guard with a full-blown attack on the senses.
Just take the opening minutes. Like Pinocchio (2021), del Toro runs with the idea that Pinocchio is a replacement for Geppatto’s son.
The difference is that del Toro’s film includes an opening sequence in which the carpenter and his 10-year-old boy play in their Tuscan village, followed by a bomb that blows Carlo to smithereens. Um, that wasn’t in the Disney film? Neither was the setting of 1930’s Italy, when the towns were littered with bodies, the walls plastered with posters and the taverns drunk with fascists.
Geppatto (David Bradley) would rather drink alone, whittling away at a wooden puppet while he chugs a bottle of wine. After a few too many glasses, a fairy comes to his door and brings the puppet to life, but when he wakes, he finds the creature to look more like a creepy version of Groot than the toy he was working on.
The creation has more in common with Frankenstein than it does Pinocchio, which is to be expected from a director who is known for taking classic stories and giving them a tragic spin (Pan’s Labyrinth, The Shape of Water).
Every aspect of the plot has been given a del Toro twist: Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan Mcgregor) is a writer who can’t get anything published, Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz) is a villain who has taken the place of Stromboli and his sidekick, Cat (Cate Blanchett), has become a circus monkey with long hair.
Then there’s the story itself, which sees Pinnochio join the circus and tour the countryside while fascists try to hunt him down and Geppatto tries to save his life. As he races to find Pinocchio, the journey threatens to end both their lives, and they’re forced to reckon with the things they’ve said and the choices they’ve made.
This magical, mythical adventure is inspired by folklore and wise tales, and draws from a wealth of references including Carlo Collodi, monster movies, Disney classics and 19th-century poetry.
It is dark to the point of being eerie, dense with shadows and symbolism, and like most recent animated features, bolstered with serious lessons about self-worth that just might hit home for the adults in the crowd.
This is a film about a wooden puppet turning into a human, but it’s truly a film about learning to think for yourself, going against the grain and doing the right thing. There’s something so wonderful about the way Pinocchio embraces the puppet that he is, expressing his emotions freely and questioning the rhetoric of fascist Italy.
It’s a nice twist on the part of del Toro, one that breathes new life into a wooden corpse. 4/5
