Cate Blanchett plays an evil monkey who has a change of heart! Should that not be reason enough to take the chance? After all, Netflix means never having to regret buying tickets. What ought to be universally appreciated is the film’s lovely construction: its fluid and clever animation, its deft and soulful voice performances. Some will no doubt be too sensitive to the film’s frights-while others still might be just sensitive enough to crave the mature and thoughtful murmur of the film. It will likely vary depending on each individual kid. So it is entirely possible that I am wildly misjudging the dire effect that Pinocchio could have on what I assume is its intended audience. Though, is it the worst thing for young audiences to at least be a little scared? To brave their way through the tough bits in order to get to the hushed contentment and, yes, ultimate inevitabilities of what comes after? Nothing is too saccharine nor, I don’t think, too horrifying. But del Toro manages the sentimental scale of his film carefully. Maybe that’s a blinkered way of looking at reality-an exploitation of its tangible, practical fears in a maudlin effort to broadly assert life’s beauty. (For those lucky enough to survive, anyway.)

Or, rather, proves its steadfast existence by showing what forces like fascism, or predacious opportunists, can’t entirely snuff out. The entire film, fraught with danger and lilting with poignant melancholy, is an exercise in exploring the seams between life’s pleasures and its terrible pains, a film that turns toward our grim era and wrestles some measure of hope and kindness out of it. This may actually be a bridge too far for really little kids, but for the older, or more adventurous and steely hearted, there is something poetic, even comforting, about the way Pinocchio confronts these murky mysteries of existence. Or maybe the biggest, most grownup change is that Pinocchio keeps dying-he’s shot, run over with a car, etc.-which sends him to the underworld to converse with Death (also voiced by Swinton) and discover his immortal nature. Perhaps the most significant difference is that, instead of heading to Pleasure Island and turning into a donkey, Pinocchio is conscripted into Mussolini’s youth army, taught to attack and kill in a tragic violation of his guileless optimism.

A wicked puppeteer ensnares Pinocchio, but in this film he is named Count Volpe ( Christoph Waltz) and is a more slinking, sinister creation than Disney’s Stromboli. There is a talking cricket, though here he is called Sebastian, a roving writer played by Ewan McGregor. Which means something fatal hangs in the air not just around Geppetto, grieving and drinking, but around pretty much everyone.įans of the Disney Pinocchio, from 1940, will only recognize some story beats here. It’s World War II times, and Italians like Geppetto are stuck under Il Duce’s iron thumb. Geppetto, given lively and growly voice by David Bradley (the Harry Potter actor, not the former senator), is mourning the loss of his son, whom we see die in an air raid. This version of Pinocchio is, rather disarmingly, about death. There’s also a sideways whimsy to be tapped into-both the cozy, throw-back old-fashionedness of Grimly’s creation and the more modern wiggle of del Toro’s mind.

Stop-motion is a perfect format for this particular adaptation, effectively capturing the unsettlingly just-shy-of-human physicality of this wooden puppet brought to life. His version of Pinocchio (on Netflix December 9) is pointy and sad and grim, befitting of his past oeuvre and, one hopes, reminding parents that their kids can handle-and may even need-the creepier, more complicated stuff to balance out the sugar.ĭel Toro’s stop-motion animated film is based on the author and illustrator Gris Grimly’s 2002 take on the classic fairy tale, to which del Toro was no doubt drawn for its moody, haunted-carnival trappings. For those of you who, like me, have watched the glut of wistful-sweet Pixar movies and rousing princess musicals released in recent years and wondered where all the genuinely strange, dark children’s movies-like there used to be, we swear!-have gone, Guillermo del Toro’s new film comes as a welcome response.

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