Pinocchio Review

gamerant.com:

Disney's Pinocchio is rightly considered one of the studio's best animated films. First released in 1940, the animated fairy tale of a puppet coming to life and eventually becoming a real boy has stood the test of time. As with other Disney animated films, Pinocchio has now been given the live-action treatment by director Robert Zemeckis.

Premiering on Disney Plus, Zemeckis's Pinocchio is a reasonably faithful translation of the original. It's still a story about growth and transformation, but with a glossy new coat of admittedly impressive CGI. However, as much as it gains from modern filmmaking sensibilities and technology, it loses quite a bit of the magic that the animated original holds.

Disney Fan Compares Original And New Pinocchio In Side-By-Side Video

The story of Pinocchio remains very much the same. Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) comes across the home of lonely carpenter Geppetto (Tom Hanks). Geppetto has carved a marionette, which is brought to life by the blue fairy (Cynthia Erivo) and given the objective of proving himself brave, truthful, and unselfish. Jiminy is given the task of being Pinocchio's conscience, and the wooden boy sets off on a wayward adventure, encountering villains and monsters, and eventually finding his way back home.

Robert Zemeckis proves himself the right choice for the story. Having experimented numerous times with the possibilities and limitations of CGI characters (years later, his Polar Express is still the textbook example of the uncanny valley), the director finds himself right at home rendering a boy made of wood and bringing him to life. Here, Pinocchio avoids the pitfalls of computer-generated characters, blending relatively seamlessly with the live-action