Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)

Written by r96sk on January 2, 2023

It's good, even if I wouldn't say it's anything better or worse than its Disney animated counterpart - at least it is a marked improvement on that aforementioned company's remake, mind.

The big win of 'Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio' is the stop-motion animation, which is extremely nice indeed. As for everything else? Nothing leaps out of my mind if I'm honest, even within 30mins of watching it. I personally found the design of the titular character to be 'just' OK, same goes for Sebastian J. Cricket & Co.

I did like the casting of Ewan McGregor and David Bradley, particularly the latter. Christoph Waltz, meanwhile, is alright in his role. The more serious vibe of the film is a positive, though I don't think it comes across as deep as it intended (e.g. that last line from Cricket isn't, in my opinion, as effective as the film seems to think it is). As for the music: fine but forgettable, for me.

Again, it's passable. I just unfortunately didn't overly care as much as I wanted to for this story and its characters. The 1940 film did it slightly better, fwiw.