Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio
Year: 2022
Rating: PG
Length: 117 minutes / 1.95 hours
Disney has dominated the fairy tale adaptation for so long that it’s refreshing to see something like Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio (2022) take a different approach to the story of Pinocchio instead of merely copying the 1940 version. Fittingly enough, using stop-motion for this movie was a great way to be creative as well as align with the whole “talking wooden puppet” motif. And while the time jump into World War II Italy obviously doesn’t make this a faithful adaptation of the original work, it’s at least grittier than the more colorful animated versions have come to represent.
I appreciate all the work that goes into stop-motion animated movies. I enjoyed Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) and Laika’s Kubo and the Two Strings (2016), so it’s nice to see other animation companies like ShadowMachine enter the feature-length movie realm with their work. That being said, the human characters felt a bit off in this, sometimes looking more like the puppets from Team America: World Police (2004) than characters distinctly different from the titular character who is supposed to be a puppet. Despite this, the animation itself is smooth and has Guillermo del Toro’s distinct visual style.
Story-wise, this version of Pinocchio has some interesting elements that take the idea of a living, sentient puppet to a few logical conclusions. The consideration of Pinocchio’s immortality (or at least tree-like longevity) was a plot point I wasn’t expecting, even if it worked quite well. And while I understand del Toro’s obsession with including fascists as villains in almost every movie he directs, it feels a bit tiring here (probably because of real-life fascists being in the news all the time). Still, in a year that saw three separate Pinocchio movies, Guillermo del Toro’s version definitely elevated itself above the rest.
A visually distinct and uniquely told stop-motion take on Pinocchio, I give Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio 4.0 stars out of 5.
