Live-action remake of 1940 film strains to find any magic
After a string of liveaction remakes, from “Beauty and the Beast” to “The Lion King,” the Walt Disney Co. has finally gotten around to “Pinocchio.” Along the way, there have been some nice performances, enormous heaps of CGI and, lest anyone forget, one very blue Will Smith.
Whether any of these movies have done much to improve upon the originals is up for debate, and undertaking “Pinocchio” poses even more particular challenges. Most pressing: What you do with Pinocchio? If we’re being honest here, he’s a bit of a dud.
Do you cast a young actor to play the puppet once brought to life? Alongside some live performers (Tom Hanks, Cynthia Erivo) and
CGI characters, director Robert Zemeckis has used computer imagery to render Pinocchio (voiced by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) much in the style and vocal pitch of the 1940 cartoon. The effect is an awkward fusion of fake and real that strains to find any magic in between. This “Pinocchio,” unfortunately, is no real boy, at all.
Zemeckis’ film opens with a reminder of how foundational “Pinocchio” has been to the Disney myth-making machine. As the familiar castle logo plays with “When You Wish Upon a Star,” Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) floats down to stake claim to the theme song. “Isn’t that a catchy little tune?” he asks.
But aside from any poignant corporate lineage, the original “Pinocchio” remains about as pure an example of Disney at its archetypal best as anything.
Zemeckis’ film, in its ways just as representative of its cinematic era, keeps much of the 1940 film’s narrative shape but maintains little of its tension as a morality tale. Pleasure Island feels too much like where rafts of financially motivated remakes like “Pinocchio” might reside.
The story — penned by Zemeckis and Chris Weitz — feels like it’s lurching from one set piece or song-and-dance number to another, with cameos from Erivo (in the flesh, as the Blue Fairy and “Wish Upon a Star” singer) and Keegan-Michael Key as the voice of the deceptive red fox Honest John. Certainly, “Hi-Diddle-DeeDee (An Actor’s Life For Me)” has a different resonance in a movie where actors compete with CGI creations for oxygen.
The best reason to see “Pinocchio” is Hanks, who brings a soulful melancholy to Geppetto. It’s a corollary to Hanks’ performance as another European-accented performance as Presley manager Tom Parker in “Elvis.”
There are moments, still, that remind you of Zemeckis’ considerable powers. Enchantment doesn’t always feel so far away when the director has scale to play with, like when Jiminy floats down to the whale-like creature that has swallowed Pinocchio.
If I’m picking a modern marionette to dance with, it’s “Annette,” Leos Carax’s wonderful (and not so family-friendly) 2021 musical opus with a hand-crafted puppet at the center of another opera about art and parenthood. In that film, what was incongruous between the actors and the puppet was part of the film’s strange drama. It was emotionally devastating, and a reminder that, real boy or not, it makes no difference who you are.
MPAA rating: PG (for peril/scary moments, rude material and some language)
Running time: 1:51
How to watch: Disney+