YMMV / Pinocchio (2002)

• Americans Hate Tingle: It received So Okay, It's Average reception in its home country of Italy. But in the US (and in most other countries), it was heavily lambasted for its poor dubs and casting of middle-aged Benigni as the title kid character and ended up nominated for six Razzies, including Worst Picture, and winning Worst Actor for Benigni. It also had the disadvantage that in the US (and, again, most other countries), there's a strong case of Audience-Coloring Adaptation due to the 1940 Disney animated film.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: After Roberto Benigni's Oscar wins for Life Is Beautiful, he chose to use his new clout to create a long-time dream project: a faithful adaption of Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio, which he would write and direct. Unfortunately, he also made the decision to star as Pinocchio, with the minimal special effects doing nothing to disguise that the famous child puppet was 50 and balding, resulting in mixed reviews but a profit in Benigni's native Italy. Then came the American dub. Realizing this was going to be a hard sell to Americans, Miramax proceeded to completely half-ass the dubbing, giving the voice role of Pinocchio to Breckin Meyer, age 28 and most famous for voicing a teenager. Between the poorly synched dubbing and a middle-aged Pinocchio with the voice that clearly came from someone much younger, the American version achieved a rare 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.
• Awesome Music: Badly received as this movie was, the two main songs are considered beautiful, especially the Blue Fairy's leitmotif, which is an incredibly peaceful song that reminds you of your successful efforts to earn a happy ending.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: This was a lifelong passion project for Roberto Benigni and he wanted Federico Fellini to direct it, but then Fellini died in 1993. Almost two decades after his attempt to bring his project to life, Benigni starred in a 2019 film adaptation of Pinocchio once again, but this time playing as age-appropriate character Geppetto and with his close friend Matteo Garrone (who directed Gomorrah, an adaptation of Roberto Saviano's controversial book, and Tale of Tales, his first English-language film based on Italian fairy tales) helmed as a director and that adaptation (a passion project for Garrone) received a much better reception than this one.
• Questionable Casting: The movie is widely mocked because the middle-aged Roberto Benigni portrayed Pinocchio (without even any wooden-like makeup) when he should have had the good artistic sense to play Geppetto instead. Years later in 2019 he actually would go on to play Gepetto in another, better received adaptation.
• So Okay, It's Average: This movie fails to compete with Life Is Beautiful and other versions of Pinocchio, but is not regarded as terribly awful. That said, despite the genuine effort in this movie and respect to the book, it also lacks much of the emotional ground that Carlo Collodi's story had.
• Special Effect Failure:
  • Pinocchio's iconic lying nose here looks ludicrous, which was another drawback of lacking a puppet makeup.
  • The movie have a lot of scenes where the green screen effects are obvious: many of the scenes featuring the Cricket, Pinocchio calling for Geppetto on a cliff by the sea, Pinocchio in the sea before the Dogfish eats him...
  • The Dogfish itself is depicted like a gigantic shark, which united with the poorly aged CGI makes it look like something that belongs in Sharknado or some other cheap killer shark movie.

---