Pinocchio movie review: Robert Zemeckis’ glossy remake of the animated Disney classic is an empty spectacle with a hit-or-miss Tom Hanks performance.
Pinocchio is the kind of story that has seeped into public consciousness through osmosis alone. You needn’t have read the source novel, nor should you have watched the several cinematic adaptations over the years to know the essentials of the narrative: it’s a morality tale about a wooden puppet who is brought to life by a fairy, and instructed by her to live a virtuous life if he wants to become a ‘real boy’.
It’s a wonder that it took Disney this long to produce a live-action remake of Pinocchio, considering that the studio’s opening fanfare remains, to this day, a version of “Wish Upon a Star” from the original 1940 animated film. But engagement – if not interest – in the studio’s retreads of its cartoon catalogue appears to have dwindled in the years since Alice in Wonderland made a billion dollars and prompted Disney to splurge billions more on remaking Cinderella, Beauty and the Beast, The Jungle Book, Dumbo, Aladdin and The Lion King.
But while each of those films made a killing at the box office, this week’s Pinocchio – rather worryingly – was sidelined to Disney+ very early on, despite the involvement of legendary director Robert Zemeckis. Once an equal of Steven Spielberg, Zemeckis has essentially sabotaged his own career by pivoting (almost exclusively) to making motion capture films and exorbitantly budgeted dramas. He found ways to make even regular films such as The Walk and Welcome to Marwen into lavish visual spectacles – not unlike what Peter Jackson did with his adaptation of The Lovely Bones. In fairness, though, this is the director of Forrest Gump that we’re talking about after all. He revels in excess.
Pinocchio is Zemeckis’ second streaming film in a row, but more interestingly for someone who has always been at the cutting-edge of the industry, also his second remake in a row. There’s a sense that Zemeckis is now working as a director-for-hire, much like Tim Burton. And it shows. With little personality and barely anything valuable to say about the world, the live-action Pinocchio remake is what Harry Styles would describe as something that ‘feels like a movie’.
Reuniting with Tom Hanks for the first time since The Polar Express, Zemeckis is uncharacteristically reigned in in the film’s opening act, which unfolds entirely in Geppetto’s apartment. But it’s difficult to resist the film’s old-fashioned charms as internal monologues make way for musical numbers and vice versa. The transition from song to speech, on the other hand, is as seamless as the the CGI. Things peak when Cynthia Erivo arrives on the scene as the Blue Fairy and leaves Pinocchio with agency and an action-plan. She could’ve stuck around for more.
After remaining rather faithful to the original film – keep them peeled, however, for a quick Easter egg-filled shot of a wall full of clocks – Zemeckis and Chris Weitz’s screenplay deflates the moment Pinocchio leaves the nest and is confronted with the evils of the real world.
The thematic core of his brief induction into a circus troupe, and his sojourn to Paradise Island with a bunch of scallywags is drowned under waves of Zemeckis’ overindulgent visuals and some truly baffling digs at social media influencers and the film industry. If that was their way of ‘updating’ the story, it was quite unnecessary.
The film momentarily flirts with profundity when it suggests that Geppetto is grieving the loss of his actual son, only to forget about this emotional thread seconds later. Hanks’ performance in that excellent opening act is suitably heartfelt, but becomes more exaggerated as the film spreads its wings. Joseph Gordon-Levitt, however, is consistently fun as Pinocchio’s conscience, Jiminy Cricket. His voice is unrecognisable behind Jiminy’s southern drawl and chipper timbre, almost as if it is the sonic equivalent of the prosthetics that Hanks was under in Elvis.
The most drastic change, however, comes right at the end – not the kaiju battle that Zemeckis’ shoehorns into the movie, perhaps as an effort to ramp up the scale in the climax, but a different detail altogether that I probably shouldn’t reveal here. Pinocchio could be an entertaining deviation for younger audiences – it’s vibrant, and eagerly generous with lessons about morality – but for fans of Zemeckis’ inventive earlier work, can’t help but feel like another safe, large-scale let-down.