I don't think there has been a more anticipated release for 2022 than Guillermo Del Toro's Pinocchio. It seemed like every little scrap of information about it made everyone far more excited for the movie. Guillermo Del Toro was immediately a draw, and him adapting such a famously dark story as Pinocchio was enough to draw a crowd, then add in Stop-Motion, throw in a production credit from The Jim Henson Company, and also give us Ewan McGregor, which come on, how would that not be a draw? I can't think of a movie that excited more people than this one. Of course, any movie that lives on hype usually dies by hype, but I think it's safe to say that this is easily the best Pinocchio movie of the year.
Yeah, high praise when you consider the direct-to-video movie and the Disney remake are not exactly high bars to jump over, but all in all, this movie was pretty good, not great, but pretty good.
I think my biggest issue would be the story, since you can kind of tell what is going to happen. They brought up that the Cricket would be given one wish at the end, and I immediately knew what he would use that wish for, that being said, it did take a few interesting turns, like Pinocchio going to this land of Death, that was pretty cool. The story taking place during war-time Italy surprisingly did more for the story than just being a depressing backdrop. No, this is not accurate to the original text, but it does seem like nobody really wants to tell a book accurate Pinocchio story any more. Pinocchio is kind of like A Christmas Carol in that regard, everyone who wants to tell the story will want to try and put their own spin on it, and I think that is pretty neat, but we don't really have that many book accurate versions of Pinocchio, even the Disney one takes its own liberties with the story.
That all being said, I did like the way the plot moved, I felt Pinocchio was a really well done character as well, you can sense that he is a good kid, just naïve and doesn't understand a whole lot. I should also talk about the animation. Netflix really had an interesting year with animation didn't it? They did Apollo 10½ which was all rotoscoped, they did Wendell & Wild which was stop motion, and they did the Scrooge movie that was a total animation trip. I feel like Netflix is spreading their wings a bit more with the kinds of movies they produce and distribute, and they are getting more A-list releases, which is fantastic. The animation for this movie is really good too, sometimes I forgot it was stop motion and thought it was really stylized computer animation.
So, this easily has to be the best movie Netflix released all year, right? Well, no. I still have to give that honour to Wendell & Wild, and honestly, Apollo 10½ comes in second. I just thought that Apollo 10½ was a very unique movie, a fascinating look at 1960s culture through the eyes of a child, and did some very interesting things with the rotoscope technique. The Sea Beast would probably be my third, since I found that one a really exciting action/adventure, though it too had a fairly predictable plot. Not that del Toro's Pinocchio isn't a really good movie, but I think I'm more impressed by the technical aspects of the movie than actually entertained by it.
That being said, I do think this is the movie that will finally lead Netflix into the right direction with their A-Game. Netflix has been seriously lacking in real A-list releases. Sure, they had Klaus, and I could argue Arlo the Alligator Boy as an A-list, but almost everything else has been D-List at best. The House is definitely a B-tier release, but almost everything released since has been A-tier quality. I think the only exceptions that I watched were Scrooge: A Christmas Carol and Marmaduke, the former being a solid B-Tier and the latter being absolute unwatchable garbage, but I think Pinocchio fit's nicely in the A-tier, and I feel that Netflix is starting to shape up. I think movies like Duck Duck Goose and The Larva Island Movie will be, not necessarily a thing of the past, but less common to see on Netflix's service. Which is good because Nimona is set to release in 2023, and I am stoked. It really does seem like Netflix is the best distributor for Nimona, and del Toro's Pinocchio kind of proved that. I can't really recommend this movie enough, this is one of the few times the end result somewhat lived up tot he hype.
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