Heart is hard to come by, nowadays. More often than not, retreading familiar ground has become calculated and commonplace, with IP mega franchises, nostalgia-laden reboots, and less room for fresh stories with a soul. Thankfully, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a standout among the twenty-plus film adaptations of Carlo Collodi’s 1883 tale that have been made so far. Moving the story from the late 1800s to 1930s fascist Italy, Pinocchio takes a story we all know and love and gives it the opportunity to have a new, poignant perspective. Del Toro and co-director Mark Gustafson understand the need to hit familiar story beats while imbuing a well-loved story with their own sensibilities, making something truly magical in the process.
Before we meet the beloved wooden puppet, we first meet writer-adventurer Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor), our narrator and Pinocchio’s eventual conscience. It’s through Sebastian that we learn about Geppetto (David Bradley), a carpenter who’s lost his son and left to wallow in his grief. When a Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton) sees that Geppetto has made a wooden boy in his workshop in a fit of drunken heartbreak, she gives the wooden creation the gift of life and a mission: to be the carpenter’s son and the companion Geppetto so desperately needs. In the morning, Pinocchio (Gregory Mann) awakens, and Geppetto’s wishes are answered — but in a much more complicated way than he could have ever imagined. The wooden boy is enticed by the new world around him, eager to soak it all in, willing to defy his new papa to follow his curiosities, and asking about absolutely everything around him. However, this curiosity and hunger to experience the outside world makes Pinocchio a target for fascists in the small town where he and Geppetto live, who would rather have everyone simply obey. The fascists aren’t the only ones who want Pinocchio, though. There’s Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz), a struggling carnival owner who wants to make the wooden boy his star – and main cash cow. Through all of this, Pinocchio has to learn to navigate the complicated nature of life, love, death, and what it means to be a real person.
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