Guillermo del Toro Pinocchio pulls at the heartstrings

If Carlo Collodi, author of The Adventures of Pinocchio, were still alive today to collect royalty checks, 2022 would have made him a rich man. It was a big year for the little wooden boy. It started with the instantly meme-worthy Russian-animated Pinocchio: A True Story, followed by the more obscure yet equally Russian Pinocchio and the Water of Life. Then Disney released a live-action remake of its 1940 film Pinocchio. And finally, Guillermo Del Toro and Mark Gustafson have rolled out a new animated take on the classic tale.

Del Toro’s Pinocchio is a Netflix movie, but it played in theaters for a week before being pulled and later released on the streaming service. If you missed your chance to watch it in theaters, today marks your chance to catch it in your living room.

But will you want to? Let’s get into Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio.

Review: Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio

With any adaptation of a staple story, I think the key is figuring out what it does differently. As we might expect from the director of Pan’s Labyrinth, this retelling of Pinocchio is far grimmer than the story a lot of people know. The darkness works in its favor, highlighting and enhancing the heartwarming charm at its center.

Take Geppetto. The film begins with him before he creates Pinocchio, which he’s inspired to do after the death of his son Carlo (a nice nod there to the author). I don’t think many versions of Pinocchio explore what Geppetto was up to before making his marionette son. By taking the time to establish him in this way, it sets him up as a character we can sympathize with for the rest of the movie.

Then there’s the setting. As in one of Del Toro’s most famous films, Pan’s Labyrinth, the story molds fantasy and real-life human history. We begin in Italy while Mussolini and his fascist followers are rising to power. The combination of fantasy and history has a kind of heart-crushing beauty. It makes the innocence of a fairy tale feel more endearing and precious.

Needless to say, Pinocchio turned on the faucet behind my eyes a couple of times. No longer can I sing a verse of “I’ve Got No Strings” without tearing up. I want to give some credit for that to the incredible voice performances. Gregory Mann and David Bradley are achingly authentic as Pinocchio and Geppetto. The characters really come to life with their talent. Ewan McGregor also does a great job voicing Sebastion J. Cricket, although I had a problem with his role in the story.

The first act of the movie establishes Cricket as an important character: he’s the narrator and he lives within Pinocchio. And he has a lovely moment towards the end. However, in between his character doesn’t amount to much beyond comic relief, and not particularly creative comic relief at that. Although I did enjoy the bit about his song always getting interrupted.

There are a few songs in this film, making it … well, not a musical. There’s too few numbers for that. The ones it has are more than enough, and on the short side to boot. I really enjoyed all of Pinocchio’s songs. Gregory Mann has a voice that could charm The Grinch.

The animation is glorious. It’s swift and butter smooth, which is amazing when you remember the burdensome process of stop-motion. The dollying shot of the children at the military school and the depiction of the Terrible Dogfish show great attention to detail.

Without a doubt, Guillermo Del Toro has produced the best retelling of Pinocchio to come out in 2022. That leaves the question, which is the worst? Answer: the Disney remake. Why? Because it’s the only Pinocchio film to come out this year to not feature Tom Kenny as a voice actor.

Grade: B+

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