REVIEW: Pinocchio

Earlier this summer, in promotion of next year's Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves film, actor Chris Pine shared his experience prepping for his role by enlisting the help of his nephew, an avid D&D player. Pine has been very open about not only how fun the experience was, but also of the reverence he's developed for what this game means to its fans. "Honestly, I think a D&D class or activity in every school would be a great idea. You get all kinds of different people to sit together. Even if they don’t have anything in common, it’s almost impossible not to get caught up in the fun of the game.”

Why do I bring this up in a review of Disney's live-action remake of its 1940 animated masterpiece?

Well, part of it may have to do with the fact that Chris Pine actually does get a verbal shoutout in the new remake (in a pop culture reference that would have felt forced in a mid 00's Dreamworks film). Part of it may be that Pine's adoration for the property he is helping to rebuild for the big screen is sorely missed among the parade of Disney live-action remakes. And, if anything, this perhaps most clear in the new remake of Disney's Pinocchio.

Insecurity abounds from the film's first minutes where Jiminy Cricket lampshades the absurdity of a phrase like “Once Upon a Time," and it does not let up. Back in the days of Beauty and the Beast (2017), these remakes designed themselves around countering aspersions about the animated canon. They wanted to prove that these films could still jive with the cool kids. Here, the film stumbles over itself scrambling to dig up plot contrivances from the 1940 film that you wouldn't dare to think of--all that just so it can laugh at them before anyone else has the chance.

Yes, this moment is recreated in CGI.
No, it doesn't look anywhere near as graceful

Despite its vocalized disdain for the animated film, this remake sketches in an exorbitant amount of specific moments and icons from the film it is adapting. It's not even the uncanny valley of having so many of the character designs come out identical to their animated predecessors that's grating. Not since The Lion King (2019) has a remake used the copy+paste function so generously. So many segments of vivid animation are translated literally into live-action (or CGI). The audience can discover in real time the beauty of hand drawn animation because they’ll feel the empty spaces of this new facsimile. And when a retelling offers little that is new, that’s all you’ll be thinking about.

It's also clear that this was a remake of obligation. Disney was not prepared to bring to life many of the sequences that might have actually looked stunning in live-action (e.g. Pinocchio and Jiminy’s underwater hunt for Geppetto), nor to hire more than six extras to appear onscreen at one time, making the film as a whole feel unnecessarily cramped. I can't even guess at the budget window for this project, but it's not even a polished production value itself that I'm missing.

I want the adoration that someone like Chris Pine shows when entrusted with bringing a long-running role playing enterprise to the silver screen for the first time. Bob Chapek must not think that such love exists for the animated canon--"seriously, who gives a flying hoot about cartoons anyways, right?" Disney must think that because remakes like this are greenlit pro forma ("I mean, we're remaking all the other cartoons, we can't just leave this one alone) that audiences will consume them in equal heedlessness.

It'd be easy to self-soothe with platitudes about how "children will continue to embrace Walt Disney's masterpiece long after they've forgotten this remake," but ... there's no guarantee of that. As long as major film studios measure their success on the size of their catalogue, senior cast members face an uphill battle fighting for recognition among an unending flood of incoming content. And if this the kind of tentpole for which Disney headlines their Disney+ Day celebration, we have reason to feel concern over what exactly that content looks like.

--The Professor

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