Directed by Robert Zemeckis
Written by Robert Zemeckis, Chris Weitz
Starring Tom Hanks, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth
Rated PG
Runtime: 1 hour 45 minutes
Streaming on Disney+ September 8

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

The first time I saw the 1940 Pinocchio in full was during the 1992 re-release to theaters. Well into the VHS era, Disney made both direct money and ancillary merchandise sales from reissuing their classic animated films to theaters about once a decade in order to drive a sense of nostalgia across generations. This evolved into the Disney Vault strategy of keeping their VHS and DVD releases “limited” by having them go out of print after a certain amount of time. But Disney+ changed all that, and the only things left in the Vault are the problematic and forgotten. So remaking the animated canon is The Mouse’s latest way of keeping their characters relevant to the current generation of kids.

As a child, Pinocchio was never a favorite of mine. Sure it had iconic songs like “When You Wish Upon a Star” and “I’ve Got No Strings” and Jiminy Cricket, arguably Disney’s third most iconic character after Mickey and Tinkerbell, but it was both scary and a little repetitive. Appreciation of the original version as a triumph of hand drawn animation came much later. And only recently have I begun to appreciate its function as a morality tale and an identity-affirming quest. Disney’s take on the wooden boy is that of a tabula rasa, landing more on the side of Aristotle and Locke in its affirmation of a person’s nature leaning towards being morally good by default, a marked change from the selfish, Hobbesian Pinocchio of Carlo Collodi’s original work. Pinocchio wants to do good and please his father but the things that lead him astray play on his naivete and good nature.

A running theme throughout this version is an emphasis on Gepetto’s (Hanks) cuckoo clocks. They are elaborate, Plus there are a few easter eggs referencing previous Disney work by Zemeckis and Hanks near the start that truly lean into the whimsical nature of this story. Later on, Pinocchio has a moral revelation connected to his father’s work and the destructive nature of delinquent children. Here the movie shifts its moralizing from external to internal, and makes its central character feel like he has even more of a growth arc over the course of the film.

Some of the best things about this adaptation are aesthetic. While the 2017 Beauty and the Beast pushed towards a dark baroque design in search of realism, Zemeckis blends realistic textures with cartoonish intent. The title character looks almost exactly like you’d expect, and Honest John (Keegan-Michael Key) looks like a fox walking upright and wearing people clothes. Jiminy Cricket (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is maybe the oddest design choice, as he resembles the original version, but his head is modeled after Hopper from A Bug’s Life. Thankfully nothing here is too grotesque or garish unless intentionally so. Pleasure Island gets the biggest upgrade over the original, seeming to draw inspiration from Coney Island’s turn of the 20th century theme parks, Luna Park and Dreamland.

While none of the performances are exceptional, Tom Hanks brings the needed warmth to Geppetto, while also giving one of his most mutter-filled performances to date. Gordon-Levitt is doing a good enough impression of Cliff Edwards that it’s a wonder they didn’t just call in Joe Ochman, Jiminy’s current “canonical” voice. All of the performances serve the goal well, but Kyanne Lamaya, in a dual role as Fabiana and her puppeteer stands above the rest. It’s helpful that she portrays a character original to this version, and her presence hints that the world isn’t as predatory as the 1940 version implies–and understandably so, few periods in history are as dark as the late 1930s.

This entire review may seem like faint praise, but the truth is that this incarnation of a boy who just wants to be real is as emotionally effective as the original, and rarely feels heretical in the way that some of these other live action adaptations are. While not as mesmerizing as the original animation, it mostly works, and the only real criticisms I have feel like picking at small choices that didn’t affect my overall enjoyment. At the very least, Monstro is pretty cool, and the design isn’t worried about realism. What a relief.