Directed by : Guillermo del Toro and Mark Gustafson

The one thing that makes life precious, you see, is how brief it is.

A still from 'Pinocchio'

Spoilers ahead...


A stop motion musical about a wooden boy Pinocchio (voice by Gregory Mann) who is magically brought to life to mend the heart of a grieving father Geppetto (David Bradley). What follows are the adventures of Pinocchio as he learns the good and bad sides of this world, with the story set in fascist Italy of 1930s. 

The movie starts with a father losing his child at a young age and ends with a child outliving his parents. Both thoughts always gets to me, like which is worse, or maybe its impossible to tell.  Simply hard to imagine the life of the person who lives in both cases. 

We see a good flashback through Cricket (Ewan McGregor) who later lives in the heart of Pinocchio, as the lovely relationship of Geppetto and his young son Carlo (voice by Alfie Tempest) is developed only to be cut short by a terrible war accident where Carlo dies. 

Consumed with grief for years, Pinocchio comes in the life of Geppetto, but as expected he doesn't openly accept him. A part of the reason being he doesn't want to be told that Carlo will never return in flesh as a boy. Among many musical pieces, the first one involving Pinocchio is my fav 'Everything is new to me', its a hilarious fun take of a young boy learning new words. 

There's main 3 adventures, one involves a carnival guy Count Volpe (voice by Christoph Waltz) who is thrilled to know he has found a talking puppet in Pinocchio, second is about getting enrolled at war where Podesta's (voice by Ron Perlman) strict set rules have to be accepted at any cost that holds true for his own son too, and lastly a giant sea whale shape creature that wants to eat anything that comes in sight of it. 

While I enjoyed the former, the Podesta one was little irritating to watch with respect to how fascist the town was. The latter adventure was the only one where I felt bored, and probably could had been left out. 

The rabbits, hell lady or Cricket (who thank goodness gets to complete his song at endcredits), all provide some good laughing moments. The visuals are great, giving total feel of the grim world the story is set in and how Pinocchio's innocent mind takes him to many misadventures. 

I like how father-son relationship stays the main focus of entire story even when Pinocchio participates for Volpe or enrolls (forcefully) for Podesta, in his mind he is only thinking of papa or making him proud. Also, love how slowly Geppetto realizes that he can't have Pinocchio to be a look alike of Carlo, rather must accept him for his own qualities. The confusion Pinocchio has, or the feeling he goes through learning he is a burden for his own papa, having just learnt what 'burden' means from 'Cricket' just recently. All of it makes for a great watch. 

Overall, Pinocchio is a lovely animation movie full of strong emotions, that should work maybe slightly more for the matured audience than the children for the dark mood it carries.

My Rating : 7/10