Tom Salinsky (Best Pick podcast) and Rob Miller (Creative Industry Insight podcast) join Flixwatcher to review Tom’s choice Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.
Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a 2022 stop-motion animated musical fantasy, directed by Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson. Loosely based on the 1883 Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, this version reimagines the story of Pinocchio, set in fascist Italy between World War I and II. It won the 2023 Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
Geppetto (David Bradley) is a woodcarver who tragically loses his beloved son Carlo, who is killed during a bombing raid. He carves a wooden boy which The Wood Sprite (Tilda Swinton) brings to life and assigns Sebastian J. Cricket (Ewan McGregor) to teach and guide him. Geppetto is initially terrified by Pinocchio and then frustrated by his antics and is forced to send him to school. But on the way he is tricked by Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz) and his monkey Spazzatura (Cate Blanchett) and ends up in their circus.
Not surprising then that Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio shares many visuals and themes found in his other works like The Devils Backbone or Pan’s Labyrinth. The stop-motion is unbelievably detailed and clearly a labour of love. Scores for recommendability were mixed, Pinocchio looks beautiful but some of the songs don’t land and it is on occasion too terrifying and sad to be a children’s film, however it still manages to score a very respectable 3.33 overall.
Like, Listen and Subscribe to Flixwatcher…
We’d love it if you subscribed to the show! You can do so super easy by clicking on the buttons below for your favourite podcatcher 🙂
