Movie in one sentence:
Annoying wooden child wins the love of his creator after he's pretended to be disturbed by him for half a day.
Movie in more sentences:
Years after losing his only child to a plane missile, Geppetto drowns himself in alcohol and creates a wooden puppet in the likeness of his son. Before he can even finish, he loses consciousness and a well-meaning spirit shows up to grant it life with the belief it'll fix his broken heart.
But Geppetto is not immediately sold and the living piece of wood catches the attention of all the wrong people. Pinocchio is dragged into all kinds of dubious situations, whilst trying to understand what it means to be alive.
I've been fighting with my Rottentomatoes account for months, so don't mind me putting this here.
Was looking forward to this one, everyone's so positive about it, but I'd say it's as good as Disney's original Pinocchio. And depending on personal preference, that entails it's either a masterpiece or a rushed story with good intentions.
It has many interesting turns and choices, but none are given the amount of time needed to develop. The story starts off with this overly sappy relationship between a bright-eyed archetype and his senile old father, who for some reason doesn't age further throughout the many years he supposedly mourns his child's death. Was it too much to ask to have another, younger puppet of Geppetto for the intro bit?
When Pinocchio is brought to life, we very briefly have Geppetto acting spooked, but he gets over it fast, and though he doesn't call him his son on their first day together, he still takes care of him. Because of this, the cricket scolding him for his mistreatment of Pinocchio really came out of nowhere. This insect was way too emotionally involved, while he barely interacted with, well, anyone. A pointless character -unfunny and didn't contribute to anything.
The movie had oddities I could not overlook, like Pinocchio's random and selective knowledge of objects and concepts, Lampwick's overnight fondness of Pinocchio, him surviving the same explosion that kills his father and sends Pinocchio flying, not making a single appearance afterwards, the circus leader crucifying Pinocchio for truly no discernible reason, the cricket getting a wish as reward for doing nothing and using it to bring Pinocchio back to life opposed to Geppetto's real son, this same cricket narrating the movie even though he's dead (????), and the story ending with no mention of the war being a thing anymore.
This and Disney's remake also had the same idea of inserting a vague conclusion to what Pinocchio's fate is going to be. I would say this movie had a better reason to go this route if there wasn't that whole scene where he gave up his immortality to save Geppetto. A stronger ending would've been if he stayed dead.
I think this Pinocchio is critically celebrated because we've just had two Pinocchios that were truly terrible. But listen, it's like comparing a grocery store cake to two heaps of literal manure. There's nothing wrong with grocery store cake, very tasty indeed, but calling it on par with a bakery's is going overboard with it.
I didn't like this movie much. There are good scenes in it, good conclusions to relationships, but the journey to these were almost non-existent. Geppetto and Pinocchio love each other, the latter willing to be enslaved and die for him, even though they've barely spent any quality time together.
..And the song about shit was the most juvenile Family Guy nonsense ever. Luckily it was short and ended with a bullet.
I might look up the songs on Youtube, but will likely never watch this again. As cool as stop-motion is, the human puppets in this looked unpleasant, and so, there's little left of what I liked about the movie.
It's not objectively bad, but not objectively good. It needed very little adjustments to make it objectively good, and I recall hearing the project struggled to reach the finish line. With that in mind, this could've been a tremendous failure, so if I may end the review with some positivity: At the very least it's a coherent story.
Was looking forward to this one, everyone's so positive about it, but I'd say it's as good as Disney's original Pinocchio. And depending on personal preference, that entails it's either a masterpiece or a rushed story with good intentions.
It has many interesting turns and choices, but none are given the amount of time needed to develop. The story starts off with this overly sappy relationship between a bright-eyed archetype and his senile old father, who for some reason doesn't age further throughout the many years he supposedly mourns his child's death. Was it too much to ask to have another, younger puppet of Geppetto for the intro bit?
When Pinocchio is brought to life, we very briefly have Geppetto acting spooked, but he gets over it fast, and though he doesn't call him his son on their first day together, he still takes care of him. Because of this, the cricket scolding him for his mistreatment of Pinocchio really came out of nowhere. This insect was way too emotionally involved, while he barely interacted with, well, anyone. A pointless character -unfunny and didn't contribute to anything.
The movie had oddities I could not overlook, like Pinocchio's random and selective knowledge of objects and concepts, Lampwick's overnight fondness of Pinocchio, him surviving the same explosion that kills his father and sends Pinocchio flying, not making a single appearance afterwards, the circus leader crucifying Pinocchio for truly no discernible reason, the cricket getting a wish as reward for doing nothing and using it to bring Pinocchio back to life opposed to Geppetto's real son, this same cricket narrating the movie even though he's dead (????), and the story ending with no mention of the war being a thing anymore.
This and Disney's remake also had the same idea of inserting a vague conclusion to what Pinocchio's fate is going to be. I would say this movie had a better reason to go this route if there wasn't that whole scene where he gave up his immortality to save Geppetto. A stronger ending would've been if he stayed dead.
I think this Pinocchio is critically celebrated because we've just had two Pinocchios that were truly terrible. But listen, it's like comparing a grocery store cake to two heaps of literal manure. There's nothing wrong with grocery store cake, very tasty indeed, but calling it on par with a bakery's is going overboard with it.
I didn't like this movie much. There are good scenes in it, good conclusions to relationships, but the journey to these were almost non-existent. Geppetto and Pinocchio love each other, the latter willing to be enslaved and die for him, even though they've barely spent any quality time together.
..And the song about shit was the most juvenile Family Guy nonsense ever. Luckily it was short and ended with a bullet.
I might look up the songs on Youtube, but will likely never watch this again. As cool as stop-motion is, the human puppets in this looked unpleasant, and so, there's little left of what I liked about the movie.
It's not objectively bad, but not objectively good. It needed very little adjustments to make it objectively good, and I recall hearing the project struggled to reach the finish line. With that in mind, this could've been a tremendous failure, so if I may end the review with some positivity: At the very least it's a coherent story.
