Stringy
Disney’s quest for a complete “live-action” re-do of its most adored classics hits a snag with the slightly psychotic ‘Pinocchio’.
Pinocchio
Director: Robert Zemeckis • Writer: Robert Zemeckis, Chris Weitz
Starring: Tom Hanks, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Keegan-Michael Key, Lorraine Bracco, Cynthia Erivo, Luke Evans, Giuseppe Battiston, Kyanne Lamaya
USA • 1hr 45mins
Opens Hong Kong / Disney+ September 8
Grade: C
You know how you can tell a studio thinks they have a turkey on its hands? If reviews hit the day of or the day after it opens. That’s usually a sign a film is either critic-proof (Marvel movies, Zack Snyder movies) or it’s a turd. Case in point: Disney’s new Pinocchio. The film is directed by Oscar-winning (Forrest Gump) tech trailblazer Robert Zemeckis (Back to the Future, Polar Express), stars universally beloved, Oscar-winning early COVID adopter Tom Hanks (Philadelphia, Cast Away), was scored by Alan Silvestri (The Avengers), shot by Don Burgess (the OG Spider-Man, Aquaman), and has a supporting cast that includes Keegan-Michael Key, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and Cyntia Erivo. This is a big-budget (US$150 million), big box office IMAX release, yet it’s premiering on Disney+. Uh oh.
In its ongoing, cynical effort to remake all its animated IP in “live action” format (which is itself bullshit because it was all CGI so The Lion King is, essentially, still animated) and insert diverse casts into existing properties The House of Mouse has needlessly and soullessly remade the 1940 classic and brought nothing new to the table. Why Disney? Why? Wait… don’t answer that. Mickey, sorry, but the racist, sexist, homophobic boat already sailed and you can’t fix it. Take the hits, admit ya done screwed up and move on. Because look! Allow diverse creators access to your massive resources to do something new and watch it pay off (Moana, Raya and the Last Dragon, fine, Pixar’s Turning Red). This is not hard. Yet here we are.
This isn’t a memorial. It’s creepy
For some reason, Carlo Collodi’s story about a little brat (never forget he’s a brat at the start of the book) puppet that wants to be a “real” boy continues to draw filmmaker attention. There was an Italian language version in 2002 starring Life is Beautiful Oscar-winner Roberto Benigni (!) as the puppet-boy (!!), a relatively faithful 2012 Italian version, by Matteo Garrone, best know for realist crime dramas Gomorrah and Dogman, a Russian (!!!) straight-to-DVD animated version with Pauly “The Weasel” Shore as Pinocchio (I’m out of !s), and of course creepmaster Guillermo del Toro’s even more faithful, dark, stop-motion interpretation starring Walder “Red Wedding” Frey and Obi-wan freakin’ Kenobi (hurry up and take my money) among others is coming soon. Plenty of people are reinterpreting the literature. If Disney’s not going to get innovative, what’s the point?
This version cleaves pretty closely to its Second World War-era counterpart, with better effects (mostly), and a rich visual palette (nice work by production designers Doug Chiang and Stefan Dechant), however, there’s an air of weirdness that’s hard to pin down. The fact that Gepetto (Hanks) makes Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, toggling between shrill and half asleep) a duplicate of his dead son is creepy. He wishes upon a star, The Blue Fairy (Erivo) brings Pino to life and off he goes on his misadventures, with his conscience Jiminy Cricket (Gordon-Levitt) as his guide. The casual animal abuse is bit much, and the creatures who live on Pleasure Island skew too intense for very young kids. And oh my god when his nose grows… well. I had to lie down with a cool cloth afterwards. Zemeckis and co-writer Chris Weitz (Rogue One, seriously what went wrong?) take a strange detour for the finale – a minor tweak in the whale now being a sea monster – which is a bit of a head-scratcher considering the devotion they heaped on the 1940 narrative. Dare I say it? The magic is gone.
Cynthia Erivo. One scene
Are they… are they dead?
Hey, don’t get me wrong. I’m not such a purist that remakes are instantly dismissed as garbage, sight unseen, but they do need to be justified. Did the original text not get the full ride because the code at the time was a too uptight (West Side Story)? Go ahead and redo it. Is there a great film lurking in a good one, hampered by budget or technology (Suspiria)? Go ahead and redo it. But Pinocchio – and by extension Disney – is wading into waters no one asked it to clean up. Kids today are still looking at Bambi, at Snow White, at Dumbo, at The Jungle Book and Beauty and the Beast. If The Firm truly wants to be the trailblazer it sees itself as, it should be putting more work into new “classics” and new creatives rather than strip-mining its legacy – of which one’s personal taste for is irrelevant. Like it or not, we all have a Disney moment. The big D23 Expo made it clear The Little Mermaid appears to be next. How about a new story for Halle Bailey, something that’s truly hers, instead of watering down a movie everyone adores? I swear if they even think of touching Robin Hood… —DEK