.Guillermo del Toro´s Pinocchio review · 11:16pm Dec 15th, 2022
Huzzah everypony! This is Dianabel. After looking forward to it since it was announced, I finally watched Guillermo del Toro´s Pinocchio. And boy, was it such a beautiful emotional rollercoaster. I just couldn´t sit and not do a review! I must warn you though, this review will be full of spoilers, so if you haven´t watched it and do not wish to be spoiled, I´d suggest that you do. Otherwise, stay.
Now the story follows the famous story of a wooden boy that comes to life. However, it´s a very different take. Firstly, it´s set in Mussolini´s Italy. We see characters explicitly doing the fascist salute, fascist imagery, we even see Mussolini himself! While this might look like an odd choice at first, it´s actually quite genius. We see Pinocchio being shunned upon for not only looking differently but specially for having a mind of his own. This Pinocchio teaches us not to be afraid of who we are and of thinking differently. As I read somewhere, it also fixes the black and white mentality of the original fairytale. It´s not only lying is bad and obeying is good, sometimes doing the opposite is the right thing.
As expected, the movie also touches the topic of war. Even though it´s not the main theme of the movie, it does play a very important part. The whole reason why Gepetto creates Pinocchio in the first place is because he lost his son in the war. We even witness how his son dies in the first ten minutes of the movie! The more I thought about it, the more terrifying it was to me since something similar almost happened to my grandfather (may he rest in peace), when he was Gepetto´s son´s age. It also gives the story a much more mature take. The pleasure island is not full of candy or endless games, rather it´s a militar academy training children for war. We see a child bearing the pressure to be tough to make his military father proud who looks down on him all the time. What´s worse, none of the children understand how bad war is until they see it with their eyes.
But the main theme of this movie is accepting life and death. Gepetto learns to move on from his son´s death and stops trying to make Pinocchio be more like him. On the other hand, Pinocchio dies and reborns several times in the movie. To him, this seemed fun at first but then he learns the consequences. At the end, he remains inmortal but he accepts it and lives his life to the fullest for those who are not around anymore. Kind of a bold ending, isn´t it?
Apart from the story and its themes, the characters are one of the strongest points in this movie. Their designs are so well thought because it reflects their characters. My favourites would be the fairies´ because they reminded me so much of Biblical Angels, and Pinocchio´s because it shows that he´s imperfect. Speaking of which, the best thing about all the characters is that they are so imperfect. Neither the cricket, the voice of consicence, is perfect! But the beautiful thing is that they grow into better people and creatures. The voice acting was excellent as well.
So much effort and heart was put in this movie. The choice of using stop-motion was on point, even though this was the reason why Guillermo almost wasn´t able to do the movie, since such movie would need a huge budget and no company was willing to finance it (fortunately, Netflix did). I couldn´t imagine this story in another form. The music is absolutely gorgeous and the songs are also very diverse. There are happy and funny songs, but also more melancholic or sad, just like the movie itself. I guess my favourite would be Ciao Papa. Seriously, listen to it, it´s so beautiful.
I honestly have no negative critiques for this movie! I´m so grateful that Guillermo managed to do this incredible masterpiece and finally gave us a good adaptation of Pinocchio this year and not a soulless or a quick cashgrab (I´m looking at you Disney!!). I give this movie a solid 10/10!
But what about you? Did you like this movie? Let me know in the comments!
