Master of the macabre Guillermo del Toro relishes the strange and unusual in all his films and now he’s trained his twisted sensibilities on Carlo Collodi’s classic fairy tale of a wooden boy come to life, The Adventures of Pinocchio.
This ambitious stop-motion animated feature set in 1930s Fascist Italy, Netflix’s latest incarnation of the timeless 1883 children’s book, recently had its worldwide premiere at the BFI Festival in London and will debut stateside in Los Angeles at the Animation Is Film Festival this month.
Co-directed by del Toro and Mark Gustafson, the animation director behind Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox, Pinocchio was co-written by del Toro, Crimson Peak’s Matthew Robbins, and Over the Garden Wall’s Patrick McHale. It stars the vocal talents of Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Burn Gorman, Ron Perlman, John Turturro, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Tim Blake Nelson, Christoph Waltz, and Tilda Swinton.
So far Pinocchio has garnered promising reviews that point out its poignant themes of love, loss, and acceptance alongside the creepy appearance of signature del Toro creatures that inhabit this less-gentle, horror-tinted adaptation. The film now has a stellar 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.
Here’s a review roundup from some of the stop-motion movie’s many admirers:
“Being the sort of critic who has almost never met a work of stop-motion animation she didn’t like, especially if it’s just on the edge of being too creepy for kids, and who loves any adaptation of Pinocchio, this film is right in my sweet spot,” states The Hollywood Reporter’s Leslie Felperin.
Variety film critic Guy Lodge applauds Pinocchio’s merits as “Unfolding over a faintly indulgent but never dull two hours, this is a rare children’s entertainment that isn’t afraid to perplex kids as much as it enchants them, down to a coda that prompts a certain level of junior existential contemplation (not to mention a mournful tear or two) at the notion of a dead insect in a matchbox coffin in a boy’s wooden — but very real — heart. It’s a vivid, lavish stroke of weirdness, better seen than described. Pinocchio always has been.”
Claiming this to be the Academy Award-winning director’s finest film in a decade, IndieWire’s Rafael Motamayor concludes that “In several ways, Pinocchio is a giant middle finger to the Disneyfication of both the original Carlo Collodi story, and of fairy tales in general. Though this is a movie the whole family can see and get something out of, it never tones down the story for kids, nor does it talk down to them.”
Insisting that this is del Toro’s most deeply personal projects, Oli Welsh of Polygon believes Pinocchio to be an absolute feast for the senses. He writes, “It is an incredible spectacle of a sort that CG and even hand-drawn animation cannot hope to achieve: rich, tactile, somehow intimate, even in its grandest moments. The puppets, as you might expect from the creator of Pan’s Labyrinth’s Pale Man, are variously eerie, uncanny, grotesque, adorable, and sad creations, and always memorable. The screen is always saturated with light, color, and detail, and the animators stage amazing coups of action and scale.”
Finally, The Wrap’s Nicholas Barber praises the careful attention to detail and heartfelt craftsmanship that went into this passion project. “It’s intense, creepy, often harrowing stuff, so you can see why del Toro has said in interviews that his Pinocchio isn’t a children’s film. But that doesn’t mean that brave children, and brave adults, won’t adore it. Del Toro and his co-writers, Patrick McHale (Adventure Time) and Matthew Robbins (Crimson Peak), balance the more hellish misadventures with chirpy humor, Alexandre Desplat’s songs are sprightly fun, and the Ray Harryhausen–worthy models have a folksy, old-world charm and a limber grace. Stop-motion movement has rarely, if ever, looked as natural.”
Netflix will release Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio in movie theaters this November prior to its official streaming premiere on December 9.
Watch this entertaining behind-the-scenes look at the making of the movie below:
