Movie Thoughts: Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)

• Released :October 15, 2022
  
• Directed by: Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson
• Running time: 1 h 57 min
• Rating 3.5/5

Synopsis

A wooden boy grows up in fascist Italy and faces various troubles, while trying to return to his father.

My Thoughts

Sometimes there's a piece of media that you respect more than you actually enjoy it. Here's such a case. If I can just be blatantly honest: I generally do not like the Pinocchio story or its adaptations. I've seen quite a few throughout my life (mostly before I started doing Movie Thoughts) and none of them actually appealed to me. I haven't read the original book (and have no desire to) but the whole story just never did it for me. Including even the beloved Disney adaptation, which is one of my least favorite Disney films that's not a package film. 

Another thing you might've noticed on this blog is that I barely review stop motion animation. This also has a reason: it's simply my least favorite form of animation. Before you get your pitchforks out, I absolutely respect the work and time and effort that each of the animators and filmmakers put into creating these. Stop motion is an animation form unlike any other and it takes a lot of dedication and I absolutely 100% admire that. It's just that the final result often has just that tiny feel of uncanniness in the movements that I can't really get past. I will absolutely admit that this has gotten better over the years, but just something always looks "off" about it for me personally. And I feel there's people that appreciate this roughness to the animation, but for me the slight uncanniness of movements (and sometimes character designs) in stop motion is just something that always puts me off a bit, which I why I don't watch a lot of stop motion movies. Again, I absolutely respect all the time and dedication the filmmakers put into this style of animation, I guess it's just not for me personally.

Tangents aside, yeah, despite this movie having both of these elements (a Pinocchio story and stop motion animation) I actually really appreciate this movie. It's still not my favorite, but it does have a whole lot more going for it than the average Pinocchio animation I've seen. I actually like the characters here (not Pinocchio himself per se, but Sebastian the cricket, Candlewick and Gepetto for example), the story has some dark themes yet never pushes it too far if you ask me, and it has some masterful looking stop motion animation and character designs.

I can definitely see this movie not being for everyone, especially with the heavier themes of mortality, loss and fascism in this one, but I think it strengthens the movie. I'll take this Pinocchio adaptation over any other I've seen so far any day. And like I said before, I don't think that they push the darker themes too far for the most part. Definitely not for the youngest kids, but I feel older kids, teens and adults can get a lot out of it. I'll be sad at times, but there's also plenty of good, funny and wholesome moments to make up for it. And even the ending is nicely bittersweet, with all of Pinocchio's loved ones eventually passing on but he himself living a life of travel and possibly eventually moving on as well. It's kind of left up to interpretation, which is good. 

I guess I do have some slight issues with some of the human designs looking a bit uncanny valley but like, I've already done my stop motion tangent which mentioned those. I guess this is just personal preference.

Overall still a masterful movie I recommend. Not 100% appealing to me personally, but still great nonetheless.