US 88m Dir: Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske
Pinocchio is a masterpiece.
It's such a weird story as lonely carpenter Geppetto creates a marionette puppet and then wishes on a star that it becomes a real boy. The Blue Fairy grants the wish but Pinocchio is only a talking puppet until he proves himself. With Jiminy Cricket not really doing as good job as his conscience, Pinocchio soon starts making some poor choices.
The plot is a bit all over the place, not really coherently telling a story with a start, middle and end but instead drifting off all over the place. It's striking now how dark and frightening this film is for kids. The theme is about making the right choices and being a good person and the film goes to really dark places. There's a sequence where Pinocchio goes to Pleasure Island where he smokes and drinks. A fellow visitor then turns into a donkey (a 'jackass') in a horrific moment of body horror and Pinocchio himself even grows donkey ears. There's also the whale Monstro, cinema's first Jaws-like animal. Pinocchio even dies at the end! It's all carefully managed, scary but never quite crossing the line of being unacceptable and always with a moral point to make.
It's striking just how much the Disney animation moved on between Snow White and Pinocchio. Here there's all sorts of different types of animation thrown together, with plenty of interesting angles. Here it's the most fantastical character who is portrayed by rotoscope (i.e. converted from a real actor) because of the uncanny valley feel this creates. Snow White still looks great but Pinocchio is just stunning and 2D animation never made such a big leap forward again.
Perhaps a bit dark but it still stands up incredibly well and remains one of Disney's finest animations.
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