{"id":38328,"date":"2022-12-29T22:24:51","date_gmt":"2022-12-30T03:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/?p=38328"},"modified":"2022-12-29T22:24:51","modified_gmt":"2022-12-30T03:24:51","slug":"pinocchio-2022","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/29\/pinocchio-2022\/","title":{"rendered":"Pinocchio (2022)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Disney continues their latest studio motto of remaking and sequelizing everything that they\u2019ve ever produced. The last being the horrendous \u201cLion King<\/a>\u201d CGI remake. Of course the Devil\u2019s Advocate will explain that \u201cPinocchio\u201d is more of another adaptation (one of three<\/em><\/strong> in 2022!) of the 1883 tale, but it\u2019s a remake of the 1940 animated movie. Every character look like their animated counterparts, right down to Tom Hanks as Geppetto. God love Tom Hanks, he certainly tries his best here, and even does his best with the musical number he\u2019s given. But it\u2019s all an uphill battle for a lot of what is established here.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Robert Zemeckis directs this live action and CGI retelling of the beloved tale of a wooden puppet who embarks on a thrilling adventure to become a real boy. Old Geppetto is a lonely woodcarver who builds and treats Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) as if he were his real son, after years wishing for companionship. Pinocchio is brought to life thanks to the beautiful Blue Fairy, and guided by Jiminy Cricket, a wandering talking cricket who serves as Pinocchio\u2019s guide as well as his “conscience,\u201d Pinocchio searches for a way to become a real boy but falls prey to the predatory Honest John.<\/p>\n

\u201cPinocchio\u201d oozes Disney ephemera. In one scene Geppetto waits for all of his cuckoo clocks to go off at midnight, and the cuckoos in the clocks are all Disney characters from Woody, and Donald Duck right down to Zemeckis\u2019 Roger Rabbit. Congratulations, Disney is finally recognizing Roger Rabbit again. The aforementioned scene is about as much of a misfire as the movie is, because rather than delight in the cameos as I usually do, I more nodded my head groaning \u201cYes, I get it. There\u2019s Woody. And Donald Duck. And the Lion King.\u201d A lot of \u201cPinocchio\u201d elicits that same labored reaction, as it\u2019s a movie that copies and pastes everything from the 1940 except for its heart and soul.<\/p>\n

For a movie that nears two hours, every event feels so rushed and sped through. The blue fairy visit, and meeting Honest John (Keegan Michael Key is great) comes out of seemingly nowhere; hilariously, after celebrating Pinocchio coming to life, Geppetto declares \u201cWe have to get you to school.\u201d Jeez. How about taking a few days to absorb that one of your creations is a sentient being or something? In either case, the script feels like an assembly line of scenes from the movie that Robert Zemeckis re-creates without a hint of enthusiasm. Rather than tap in to the wonder of most moments, it all feels so rote. Even Pinocchio\u2019s \u201cNo Strings\u201d musical number feels about as wooden as the titular hero.<\/p>\n

That said I did quite love Pinocchio\u2019s small sub-plot involving his infatuation with a small ballerina marionette and her owner Fabiana (played by the scene stealing Kyanne Lamaya). Joseph Gordon-Levitt is barely recognizable as Jiminy Cricket, and Benjamin Evan Ainsworth also–delivers on what Pinocchio\u2019s voice should sound like–which is about as complimentary as I can get. Through and through, I was never hooked in to this \u201cPinocchio\u201d as I was the original, and I\u2019m not even a fan. There\u2019s so much going on but not enough down to Earth emotions, or any of the morals that the predecessor explored. Not to mention there\u2019s no real pays off in the narrative!<\/p>\n

The Pleasure Island sub-plot kind of just ends (Luke Evans has a thankless walk on role), the whale scene feels tacked on, and we never get to know for sure if Pinocchio turned in to a real boy or not. Did the Blue Fairy just forget him? Is that light at the tunnel the two enter in to the writers\u2019 gentle way of saying that Geppetto and Pinocchio died? Either case, \u201cPinocchio\u201d is a stale re-working of a Disney classic. It might not be \u201cLion King<\/a>\u201d levels of bad, but it\u2019s certainly \u201cMulan\u201d levels of hollow and forgettable.<\/p>\n

Now Streaming on Disney Plus.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Disney continues their latest studio motto of remaking and sequelizing everything that they\u2019ve ever produced. The last being the horrendous \u201cLion King\u201d CGI remake. Of course the Devil\u2019s Advocate will explain that \u201cPinocchio\u201d is more of another adaptation (one of three in 2022!) of the 1883 tale, but it\u2019s a remake of the 1940 animated […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[64,71,219,340,349,580,700,703,809,835,1109,1756],"class_list":["post-38328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie-reviews","tag-adaptation","tag-adventure","tag-comedy","tag-family","tag-fantasy","tag-kids","tag-musical","tag-mystery","tag-puppets","tag-remake","tag-tom-hanks","tag-walt-disney"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38330,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38328\/revisions\/38330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cinema-crazed.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}