Welcome Back Pinocchio (original title Bentornato Pinocchio) is a 2007 animated movie made by Mondo TV as a sort of sequel to The Adventures of Pinocchio.
Pinocchio, now a real child, gets stuck in a large mess when he's tricked to steal money from the school he frequents and ends up returning to his old puppet form. He starts a journey to search the Blue Fairy (who earlier came to Geppetto to tell him she's going away for a while, but he forgot to inform Pinocchio) and ultimately ends up Saving Christmas.
See also Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night, an earlier animated film that also serves as a sequel to the original story.
This movie provides examples of:
- Adaptational Karma: The Coachman gets no punishment in the book or the Disney movie, but here he gets a Karmic Transformation... into a giant stick of butter.
- Adaptation Dye-Job: Despite this being supposedly a follow-up to the book, the Blue Fairy has blonde/orange hair instead of turquoise.
- Aborted Arc: Early on in the film, a lady visits Geppetto's workshop to convince him to marry her cousin. She appears again later on to remind him about that, and then it's never mentioned again.
- Aesop Amnesia: Despite the Transformation Trauma both he and Lampwick suffered the first time they visited The Land of Toys in the book, and even witnessing Lampwick dying as an overworked donkey, in this sequel Pinocchio is easily lured into returning there and gets transformed again. He apparently doesn't even recognize the Coachman and blindly trusts him.
- Ambiguously Human: Harlequin is a human-like creature with green skin and red-orange eyes, which is implied to be a zombie but never stated.
- Anachronism Stew: One of the new characters introduced in the movie is a robot, which is very out of place in a (supposedly) late 1800s setting. Subverted in that intelligent androids did already appear in fiction made around this time, with The Future Eve being released
only three years after the original Pinocchio novel. The word "robot" still counts however, as it was only introduced in 1921. - And I Must Scream: The Coachman's ultimate fate is being transformed into a giant stick of butter... which is promptly found by a priest, that decides to give it to the local soup kitchen so that they can use it for the Christmas meal.
- Animal Talk: After being turned into a donkey, Pinocchio is able to talk with other animals.
- Bait the Dog: Pinocchio is convinced to steal the school's money by a weird-looking Santa Claus so that the homeless can get a better Christmas. Except it was all a fraud, which is enough of a misbehavior to turn Pinocchio back into a puppet.
- Beary Friendly: While at the North Pole, Pinocchio helps a mother polar bear by saving her son. She then helps Pinocchio to find Santa's workshop, leading an entire bear pack to attack the villains.
- The Bus Came Back: At a beach, the heroes meet up with the tuna fish that escaped from the Terrible Dogfish alongside Pinocchio and Geppetto, serving as a Mr. Exposition to inform them of the villains' scheme.
- The Cameo: Winner, Mondo TV's mascot, is found by Pinocchio as a stray dog early on and becomes his Canine Companion.
- Canon Foreigner: The movie introduces a bunch of new characters, with the most important ones being the two new villains Harlequin and Robot and the Knight of Lost Principles.
- Christmas Elves: As per usual, many of them appear in Santa's workshop. After Santa is kidnapped, the elves have been also tied up and Harlequin is seen trying to make them his servants.
- Delivery Stork: Pinocchio meets a group of them, that carry him towards the North Pole.
- Eating Machine: Robot's introduction implies he feeds on meat, since he's as interested as Harlequin into eating the Fox and the Cat.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": Pinocchio briefly cross roads with a man that is known only as the Gypsy, as that's how everyone calls him.
- For the Evulz: The Fox, the Cat, and the two new villains decide to team up with the Coachman to kidnap Santa Claus and stop Christmas. Why? Because "we are bad, so we have to do something bad".
- Hope Bringer: The Knight of Lost Principles, who wanders around the world to bring back honesty, friendship and other positive feelings in places where they were forgotten.
- Informed Attribute: As if the lack of blue hair isn't bad enough, the Fairy's dress is pink yet everyone still calls her "Blue Fairy". Subverted when she reappears later in the movie, now wearing a more appropriate blue dress.
- Karmic Transformation: The Blue Fairy punishes the villains by turning them into donkeys... except for the Coachman, who is turned instead into a giant slab of butter.
- Lighter and Softer: Again, if this is meant to be taken as a sequel to the book, its darker tones are utterly dropped in favor of feeling more like an inoffensive Saturday Morning cartoon. Even Pinocchio's Heroic Sacrifice and the fate of the Coachman are handled without much pathos.
- Lost in Imitation:
- The look of the Talking Cricket in this film is clearly designed after Disney's Jiminy Cricket. The Blue Fairy is also depicted being blonde and using a magic wand.
- Pinocchio's design is a mishmash of his two anime adaptations: the body proportions and the circled eyes are taken from Mokku of the Oak Tree, but the mop hair and hat are based on the Piccolino no Bouken design.
- Poor Communication Kills: Happens twice in the movie:
- Early on, the Blue Fairy visits Geppetto to tell him that she's going away for a while and that Pinocchio may turn back into a puppet if he misbehaves. He then forgets to tell Pinocchio anything of that.
- When Pinocchio arrives to a carnival, he tries to get help from a clairvoyer to discover where the Blue Fairy is. She initially refuses to help him since he can't pay for her service, but then she sees the Coachman's face in her Crystal Ball and tries to call Pinocchio back to alert him of her vision... but he's too distant and can't hear her.
- Saving Christmas: The Coachman, alongside the Cat, the Fox and his two new henchmen Robot and Harlequin, decide to kidnap Santa Claus in order to use his sleigh and costume to commit frauds and turn his elves into their servants. Why? To show that they're evil. Pinocchio gets caught into one of the aforemented frauds, turns back into a puppet and later on decides to go to the North Pole to save Santa after discovering the whole truth.
- Taking the Bullet: Pinocchio, as a donkey, jumps in to save the Knight of Lost Principles from a bandit's shotgun. This self-sacrifice is enough to restore him back into a puppet, made in a wood hard enough to survive the bullet.
- Too Dumb to Live: You'd think Pinocchio would've learned that the Land of Toys is an Amusement Park of Doom after what he went through in the original story. You'd think he'd recognize the very same Coachman that lured him there the first time. You'd think some red flags would be raised when the Coachman goes on a rant about how much the Blue Fairy annoys him for getting in the way, but no, Pinocchio happily hops aboard after the villain claims that he'll find the Blue Fairy there.
- Unexplained Recovery: In the original story, the Fox and the Cat ended up getting the handicaps they pretended to have in Pinocchio's presence to deceive him, and the Fox also had to cut off and sell his own tail for food money due to them becoming extremely poor. In this sequel, they're both healthy and the Fox still has his tail.
- Visual Pun: The Coachman is referred to as "L'Omino di Burro" ("The Little Butter Man"), just like in Collodi's original story. He literally turns into a piece of butter at the end.
- Voodoo Shark: The explanation about how Pinocchio is destined to turn back into a puppet and later a donkey when misbehaving states that the Coachman cursed him when he went to the Land of Toys for the first time, a detail that was never stated in the original story or in any other adaptation of it.
