After the not-so-successful box office performance of the film adaptation of its other cartoon classic, Dumbo, as well as the impossibility of a full-fledged rental due to covid, Disney decided to release a new version of Pinocchio on its own streaming service. The original 1940 cartoon, Disney’s second after Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, is based on Italian writer Carlo Collodi’s most famous fairy tale, The Adventures of Pinocchio. The history of the wooden doll. This animation has long been a dusty Disney classic, so Robert Zemeckis took to modernize the plot. In the review below, we tell whether the director managed to create a small miracle and at least get a little closer to the level of his illustrious predecessor.

“Pinocchio” / Pinocchio

Genre adventure fantasy, musical

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Cast : Tom Hanks, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Cynthia Erivo, Luke Evans

Disney+ Premiere

Release year 2022

IMDb website 

A lonely but cheerful carpenter named Geppetto lives with Figaro the cat and Cleo, an aquarium goldfish. Somehow, Jiminy the chatterbox cricket visits them as an uninvited guest, who becomes a witness of a real miracle. Right in front of him, before going to bed, Geppetto makes a wish so that the puppet doll he made comes to life, and soon a bizarre fairy appears in the house, fulfilling the wishes of the old man. This is how Pinocchio is born – a living wooden doll, which is waiting for many bright, but at the same time dangerous adventures.

As with the resuscitation of the story of the circus baby elephant with extremely large ears, it is clear that the classic Pinocchio cartoon did not need any rethinking or turning into a film format. But the state of affairs in modern cinema leads to the unreasonable and unsubstantiated appearance of such remakes, film adaptations and other representatives of copy production.

Of course, “Pinocchio” of the 2022 model, like the original, has significant differences from the work of Collodi. But compared to the cartoon, they are too small, mostly cosmetic (as, for example, the episode when the main character’s legs start to burn, and this is a clear reference to the literary source). The plot basis here is absolutely identical to the 82-year-old tape, and some jokes are played with a frightening similarity.

At the same time, the local cricket somehow suspiciously looks like a ninja turtle in a cylindrical hat, and the fairy clearly came from politically correct modernity, despite the fact that the action takes place in a conditional distant past. The clock on the wall in Geppetto’s house also looks interesting, because as soon as they get a close-up, cult characters immediately fly out of them: toy Maleficent, Snow White, Jessica Rabbit, the aforementioned Dumbo and others appear in the frame.

Zemeckis’ candidacy as a director seems to be quite adequate for the material: after all, he is already an experienced Hollywood storyteller, who in the past, both in animated films and in ordinary ones (let’s not forget about the revolutionary animated-game “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”) with has already turned to the prose of Dickens, Chris Van Allsburg, and recently Roald Dahl with varying degrees of success when he filmed his Witches. The indisputable success of this idea is the participation of Tom Hanks in the role of the carpenter Geppetto; the actor, by the way, is already playing in the fourth film of the famous director. Here he returns to a more familiar role as a good-natured man after a villainous performance in Elvis.

But despite the serious approach and responsible attitude of the studio towards this project, it is obvious that it is doomed to be compared with the original recognized by the audience and is unlikely to score at least some points in the correspondence battle with it. The trouble is that in the format of a feature film, even such a fabulously fantasy one, the artificiality of sea scenes, where pavilion shooting is too noticeable, and attempts to evoke a sincere response from the audience a little later with the help of a sentimental ending do not get along very well together. There is a catch here, as if they are trying to deceive you, so another excellent performance by Tom Hanks and quite good expensive graphics are not able to hide this studio parasitism on its own heritage.

Although it is by no means possible to categorically state with certainty that the new Pinocchio is already something completely unnecessary to this world: nevertheless, it is able to interest young viewers to some extent, and older ones to remember the wonderful times when a fairy tale was really a fairy tale , and tried to teach some wisdom.

This film also chooses to move in a similar direction, which is good. In addition, he has several standard singing numbers, which does not spoil the picture as a whole, and new heroes who still perform some primitive function … But it is difficult to get rid of the obsessive thought about the dubiousness of the whole idea, when not a real one appears in the film adaptation of the cartoon, and a domestic cat drawn on a computer.