While Snow White And The Seven Dwarves may have been where Disney’s animated film history started, along with their canon of Disney Princesses, their 1940 film version of Pinocchio is arguably where Disney as an artistic aesthetic began. The iconic soundtrack, to the point where When You Wish Upon A Star has essentially become the official anthem for Disney, the elegant use of metaphor in its depiction of a child self-actualising, the timeless animation, that horrifying donkey transformation scene (which likely gave birth to an entire generation of Cronenberg fans); it’s a well-deserved classic.
And it is also the latest film to get pulped and sifted in the modern Disney remake machine, and between the icy reception it’s garnered already and me losing all hope in these things being good anymore after Aladdin and The Lion King, I was fully expecting to hate this. Guess I’ve found my big dissenting opinion for the year, because I actually quite liked this.
For a start, the film looks a lot better than I was expecting. It’s the standard mixture of live-action and CGI that we’ve come to expect from these remakes, and while the textures can get quite fiddly in places (Figaro, once the cutest cat in the Disney canon, has been reduced to a digitised furball here), the actual character designs work really well. Pinocchio has been translated well into 3D, Jiminy Cricket and the other animals are quasi-photorealistic but without the deadness in the eyes that made Lion King fail to work, and the set design is also pretty damn good. Stromboli’s puppet show has added details for the mechanics of the puppeteering and musical accompaniment, which was a nice touch, and Pleasure Island creates a fitting balance between the initial draw of a place that invites wanton destruction and anarchy from its child customers… with some undercurrents that there is indeed something off about this whole thing. It looks like a place a kid would be interested in going to, but then sorely regretting it.
In terms of story structure, it follows the same general path of the original (Blue Fairy, Honest John, puppet show, Pleasure Island, Monstro, real boy finale), with just a few added tweaks here and there. And most of them manage to add to the overall story, rather than just reshuffle or outright detract from it. Showing Pinocchio actually try to go to school initially helps with both his characterisation and even the bigger message about what it means to be a real boy (i.e. when the system turns you away, you’re likely to go for other options), as does the inclusion of Kyanne Lamaya as Fabiana, one of the puppeteers working for Stromboli. Along with offering build-up to the film’s finale (which is quite different, but in a good way), it also helps correct what felt like a rather haughty attitude concerning the choice to become an actor or an entertainer in general as offered by the original. Here, it’s shown as a valid choice, albeit one where you have to be careful of being exploited.
But easily the biggest change is what has happened with Geppetto, who seems to be at the centre of the “we must correct something about the original” mentality that these remakes have in spades. Mainly, it comes in the form of why he made that wish upon a star in the first place, giving him a backstory with a family and a reason because impulsive whimsy. But it doesn’t result in him taking the spotlight away from Pinocchio, though; it is still his story. It’s just that the father-and-son relationship between them has been bulked up a bit.
Now, that’s not to say that this film is the ideal version of the story; for every decision that helps to support the story, there’s another that ends up distracting from it. The tone, for instance, can get quite askew in places, with the postmodern slant towards the story manifesting in moments that seem tailor-made to pull the wonder out of the whole shebang. There’s the aforementioned opening narration, which isn’t nearly as cute as in the original, but there’s also how weirdly adult some of the dialogue gets. Not risqué (save for one moment involving Jiminy and a weirdly thicc puppet woman), but concerned with matters like taxes, the nature of the school system, Pinocchio’s name… why did they feel the need to keep explaining the rationale for his name. We get Geppetto explaining it as he makes the puppet, we get Jiminy repeating it, we get the Blue Fair repeating it; it’s a long way to go to explain a pun.
The cast list also has some odd sticking points, although I’ll admit that most of them do fine with the material. Tom Hanks, occasional threats of Elvis-level ‘European’ caricaturing aside, is still an ideal fit as Geppetto, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth as Pinocchio is just as good as Dickie Jones in the original, Joseph Gordan-Levitt takes some time to get used to but ends up being better than the original (mainly because he’s not so quick to just up and abandon Pinocchio), and Luke Evans as the Coachman matches Pleasure Island’s dangerous temptation in his delivery. But then there’s Keegan-Michael Key, who gets handed dialogue that is way too wordy and ends up botching it, while Lorraine Bracco’s smoky delivery as Sofia just plain doesn’t fit. There’s also Cynthia Erivo as the Blue Fairy, who does fine with the singing but, again, seems to fall short because she’s been given some of the worser bits of rhyming dialogue to work with.
So, yeah, there’s still some issues with this whole thing. Robert Zemeckis and Chris Weitz’s script occasionally dips into all-too-timely areas (right up to Geppetto’s cuckoo clocks now all being references to other Disney movies… for some reason), the new songs don’t work nearly as well next to the originals, and the casting juts out in odd places.
But I gotta be honest here, the positives far outweigh the negatives. The visual style works well, Alan Silvestri’s music fit the set pieces perfectly (his score for Pleasure Island especially cranks up the unease), and for as wonky as some of the story changes can be, I ultimately prefer this version to the 1940 original. Yeah, it’s not nearly as special as that film, but in delivering a story about a boy doing his father proud and being brave, honest, and unselfish, the alterations help it all fit together better. The ending especially, while admittedly a bit cheesy, won me over because it takes the idea of Geppetto loving Pinocchio unconditionally, and actually follows through with it, along with reinforcing how Pinocchio is his own person. I don’t know if I can say this is as good as the original, but it’s at least able to stand on its own as a different take on the material.
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