Critics have released their official reviews of the new live-action remake of Pinocchio, and they more or less unanimously agree that the film is wooden and lacks humanity. The original 1940 Pinocchio was the second animated feature film ever released by Walt Disney Animation Studios, three years after the release of their groundbreaking Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Based on the Italian children's novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, the film follows a lonely woodcarver named Geppetto (Christian Rub) who creates a wooden puppet named Pinocchio (Dick Jones) that is given life by the Blue Fairy (Evelyn Venable). If Pinocchio stays honest and good (if he lies, his wooden nose grows), she will transform him into a real boy. In addition to its many iconic elements, Pinocchio also introduced the classic Disney song "When You Wish Upon a Star."
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The new version of Pinocchio will be combining live-action performers and locations with CGI-rendered characters, including Pinocchio himself (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) his conscience Jiminy Cricket (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), and the fox con man Honest John (Keegan-Michael Key). The live-action cast also includes Tom Hanks as Geppetto and Cynthia Erivo as The Blue Fairy. The project, which will begin streaming exclusively on Disney+ tomorrow, September 9, was directed by Robert Zemeckis, who has previously collaborated with Disney on the motion-captured CGI animated film A Christmas Carol in 2009, continuing his interest in exploring groundbreaking effects that have spread across his entire career, including Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit?.
The embargo has lifted on reviews of Pinocchio one day ahead of its streaming premiere. Now that critics are allowed to reveal their full thoughts, the results are largely as expected: they nearly unanimously hate it. While some praise the CGI effects, many view them as dead-eyed and soulless, needlessly recreating the designs of the original in 3D rather than adding a unique live-action element. They also dismiss the story as a needless retread of the original Disney film, only adding some small superficial differences that won't thrill those who have already seen the original movie. Read selected quotes from critics below:
Graeme Guttmann, Screen Rant:
Films like Pinocchio and its live-action predecessors play it too safe with their source material, failing to justify their existence by adding anything new to a story that has been told time and time again. When put up against Guillermo del Toro's upcoming Pinocchio movie, a stop-motion animated affair that places the story in 1930s Fascist Italy, this contrast becomes starker for the titular wooden puppet.
Carlos Aguilar, Los Angeles Times:
Zemeckis’ “Pinocchio” prompts one to wish upon a star that Disney would stop diluting the legacy of its beloved animated features with these soulless knockoffs.
Andrew Barker, Variety:
As with so many of the director’s previous CGI extravaganzas, all the meticulous surface detail in the world can’t compensate for the core emptiness of the film’s digital creations. Pinocchio’s naïveté, Jiminy Cricket’s avuncular haplessness, even Figaro the cat’s mischief – all have lost a noticeable degree of humanity and soul in the transition from ink to pixels. There may be no strings on this Pinocchio, but there isn’t much of a heart in him either.
Alex Godfrey, Empire:
Today’s CGI offers the chance for animated characters to look real. Yet it’s all a little mind-scrambling. Italian director Matteo Garrone’s gorgeous, inventive 2019 take on Carlo Collodi’s 1883 book cast a, well, real boy as Pinocchio, with gobsmacking prosthetics that made him genuinely look like he was made of wood. Robert Zemeckis’ film makes him genuinely look like he’s made of CGI.
Adrian Horton, The Guardian:
Often, it’s hard to know what to blame when the Disney live-action remakes fizzle. Is it that animation allows for a suspension of belief that human actors can’t sustain? An issue with the source material? An air of corporate strategy to the whole thing? In the case of Pinocchio, it’s a combination of all three.
Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times:
A few months after Tom Hanks affected a Hungarian accent in “Elvis” that was so over the top he sounded like a villain in a 1960s cartoon series, he goes for a lower key but still slices up plenty of ham as the Italian woodcarver Geppetto.
Elizabeth Weitzman, The Wrap:
The real issue is that Zemeckis and Weitz want to make a family film with what is frankly unpalatable material for contemporary families. Grim, psychosexual fairy tales like “Pinocchio” can still be effective, of course, if the tellers respect the primal feelings and fears they evoke. But if they hedge with warmth or whimsy, the results curdle quickly.
Christian Zilko, IndieWire:
Zemeckis’ remake doesn’t stray far from the original plot, offering thinner and flatter versions of many of the most iconic story beats. The biggest difference is the heavy-handed emphasis on fame, with the villainous fox Honest John (Keegan Michael Key) droning on about the importance of having lots of followers. If it wasn’t clear that he was doing a “these damn kids spend too much time on Instagram” schtick, he turns his fingers into a cell phone and pretends to take a selfie to drive the point home.
At the time of writing, Pinocchio has a miserable score of 30% on Rotten Tomatoes. At the very least, it's not the lowest-rated Pinocchio (which would be the 2002 Roberto Benigni version, which is standing at 0%), but it can hardly hold a candle to the original 1940 animated film, which is Certified Fresh at a whopping 100%. It isn't competing well with other maligned live-action remakes either, ranking lower than the low-ranking 2019 trio of Aladdin (57%), Dumbo (45%), and The Lion King (52%).
Critics and audiences don't always agree on live-action Disney remakes, so these reviews shouldn't necessarily be a deterrent for those who are interested. For instance, The Lion King 2019 was an enormous hit, making $1.66 billion worldwide. It remains to be seen if streaming audiences embrace Pinocchio 2022, but there is only one day left to wait and find out.