Reviews WesternAnimation / Guillermo Del Toros Pinocchio

Tastes like Don Bluth

To me, Guillermo Del Toro has always been at most bleh. I'm one of the very few people that didn't like Pan's Labyrinth (even if I admit the movie is visually gorgeous), the best thing about Pacific Rim is the soundtrack and Hellboy felt like a watered down version of the comic mixed with Changeling the Dreaming.

To me, the man has a nice vision for grim but alluring aesthetics and an unhealthy, really unhealthy obsession with fatherhood. Nearly every single of his works that I saw, the theme was present there and felt almost shoehorned into the narrative, making it somewhat disjointed, in some stories, it felt as if he wanted to add more darkness to the narrative, and in the others it felt he didn't want to make it nearly as dark as it was needed.

And then, out of nowhere, it all fits here, in this stop-motion movie.

I don't know if it's because he was given free reign to deal with something that is already creepy and feeric by nature (fairytales and old stories of public domain), but here, everything that I would consider a flaw in his movies fits and enhances it.

Pinnochio isn't a delightful tale about a cute doll that comes to life as a gift. It's a grim tale about dealing with loss, the inevitability of death, how the world around us is messed up... but there is beauty and grandeur to it and because of it. Pinnochio is a walking nightmare of a half-made doll that is the stuff of nightmares, but he is eager to learn and has a raw goodness to his actions. He is a brat, but also in his refusal to listen, he contests authority. He wants good reasons to obey but wants to do good as well.

The movie has earthly color tones and a superb stop motion animation, making it the exact 'tone' of feeric creepy darkness of a german fairy tale (yes I know Pinnochio is Italian) but never too dark to the point I can't see anything that is going on.

The pacing is erratic, but it's on purpose, with the stupidity of fascism being used as a tool to leverage the narrative. A wooden doll that people think its possessed by satan? The local Podestà shuts everyone up because that is a potential fascist soldier and thus he must go to school and learn to obey. But in its eagerness to quell any questions or contestation of any kind, the fascist regime allows the growth of the very thing they want to destroy: Pinnochio's intelligence, curiosity and questions.

The main characters are flawed (but never wander too deeply into jerkass territory) trying their best in trying times and, as expected, this also ties in with the theme of acceptance and fatherhood so... yeah I really liked this movie.

If I had to point out two major flaws, was that the songs and soundtrack were lackluster, and the theater arc lasted far too long, snubbing the 'toyland' part of the movie. Imagine if Del Toro hit harder, with a toyland focused on making the kids give in to their destructive impulses towards minorities, earning them the title of 'donkeys'.

In the end, I felt like the critic in Ratatouille, brought to his childhood of dark grim tales with earned happy endings and bittersweet needed lessons. It tastes like Don Bluth, and I love it.