Robert Zemeckis understands two things about Disney’s Pinocchio. First, he knows the 1940 animated film is ingrained in the entertainment behemoth’s DNA. It’s considered by many to be the best animated film from the studio’s early days. “When You Wish Upon a Star” is now the Walt Disney Pictures fanfare. The song’s promise of wishes fulfilled under starlight is part of Disney’s patented feel-good m.o. Heck, over the years Jiminy Cricket has become the company’s B-tier mascot, right behind Mickey Mouse.
But Zemeckis also knows that the ’40s Pinocchio is weird as hell. The stranger things that punctuate that seminal early Disney effort are hidden in plain sight, though they're often forgotten as people marvel at the film's artistry. Most other filmmakers would’ve bent over backwards to pay homage if given a chance to bring Pinocchio to life in 2022. Zemeckis is not the guy you hire to do that.
His new live-action Pinocchio adaptation gives you what you’d expect, but so, so much more. It’s as if Zemeckis wanted his adaptation to play like if Moulin Rouge-era Baz Luhrmann directed Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The film is only as reverential as a Zemeckis film can be, which is not very reverential at all.
After Disney's years of uninspired retreads, like 2019’s The Lion King and 2017’s Beauty and the Beast, Pinocchio veers all the way in the other direction. The eye-popping Pleasure Island sequence alone has more personality than most anything Disney has done in this space recently. While the aggressive shift in artistic influence might alienate some Mouse House purists, anyone willing to take a walk on Zemeckis’ wild side might get a kick out of this one.
Take Tom Hanks, for example. As Geppetto, the screen legend channels the same cornball energy that made his portrayal of Col. Tom Parker in Elvis a glorious meme. Even when Hanks is hamming it up, he’s still credible and magnetic (kind of like Zemeckis as a director). Continuing with the irreverence, the film’s portrayal of Pinocchio is like if you made Ralph Wiggum out of wood and gave him Jacob Tremblay’s voice. Zemeckis gets in a few fun jabs at Pinocchio’s blissful ignorance (at times involving fire), which help keep the film from getting too saccharine.
Zemeckis’ Pinocchio doesn’t hew too closely to the preciousness and regality of the animated classic. It's more of a parking-lot carnival ride through an uncompromised vision, and the most enjoyable one of these live-action Disney flicks since 2016’s Pete’s Dragon.
