Review | Netflix movie review: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio – stop-motion animation masterpiece brings Carlo Collodi’s fantasy story to life
- Every frame of Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, the tale of a wooden puppet magically brought to life, is beautiful and intricately crafted
- The director’s take on the fable is darker than that of the famous Disney cartoon version – this film is as much for adults as it is for children
4.5/5 stars
The full title is Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, and that could not be more accurate. The Mexican director’s first full-length stop-motion animation, in re-telling the fable about the wooden boy who springs to life, rolls together many of his interests into a fascinating twist on this evergreen tale.
Living in Italy during the rise of dictator Benito Mussolini and fascism, the wood carver Geppetto (voiced by David Bradley) loses his son Carlo when a bomb hits the church where he is working. He takes to the bottle and, in a drunken stupor one night, creates a replacement from the finest Italian pine.
This mischievous Pinocchio is brought to life by magical spirits, and overseeing him is Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor), a whimsical insect who spends his days writing his memoirs.
At first, Geppetto – and the rest of the townspeople – are terrified of this talking, walking miracle. He blows a raspberry in church, refuses to obey his papa, and skips school on his first day, when the puppeteer Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz) lures him to his travelling carnival with hot chocolate and tricks him into signing a cast-iron showbiz contract.
There are elements you will surely recognise in this film, co-directed by Del Toro and Mark Gustafson from the original 1883 book by Carlo Collodi – not least the giant sea creature that swallows Geppetto when he goes looking for Pinocchio.
