After watching Disney’s new live action “Pinocchio” (2022), I have come to the conclusion that it … is not good. Throughout its one hour and 45 minute runtime, I put my biases aside, and remained neutral to maximize fairness.
Directed by Robert Zemeckis, this movie is based off of Disney’s 1940 edition of Pinocchio. Certain themes, character designs, costume designs and exact shots replicate the original, so this begs the question; why remake it in the first place?
This movie does have small doses of positive aspects, but they do have to be searched for. For example, the character Honest John (the mischievous fox) is thought through and expressive. He contrasts from the rest of the movie by being interesting to watch. Honest John also has a visually pleasing costume design as well.
Another aspect of this movie they did well on are the cuckoo clock designs. Although I am not a huge fan of the Disney clock references, I can see fans enjoying them. The background of it all does look fairly decent, as well.
There are many questionable production choices made within this remake. For example, the horrid composition and editing. Composition is the way the frame controls the narrative and encourages viewers to pay attention to certain characters or points of interest in a scene; a story gets unbearably confusing and boring without thought out composition within a film.
An egregious example is when the Pleasure Island Coachman is singing his ‘peer pressure song’ to Pinocchio (1:01:5). The shot starts, then the song starts, and the camera zooms out and stays static and uninterrupted for 45 seconds. The Coachman is hopping all around the set, intimidating Pinocchio, but the camera seems uninterested in supporting that.
If this was released in the early 2000’s, it would be a ‘straight to DVD’ film. Pinocchio feels like he is ‘back seating’ his own story, while the plot pushes him to perform actions. To answer my question from the beginning, there was no real reason to remake the original. Overall, I would rate this movie a solid 3/10. I do not recommend this movie to anyone wanting to indulge in a compelling story. I would, however, recommend this movie to people who would like to see an example of unclear motives, unreadable story line, odd pacing, awful CGI usage, and another movie made just for money.
