Title: Pinocchio
Release Date: 23 February 1940
Director:Ben Sharpsteen and Hamilton Luske
Production Company: Walt Disney Productions
Summary/Review:
Pinocchio is one of those movies where you feel like you know the story even if you’ve never seen it. But actually watching it fills in some gaps and reveals some misconceptions. The most famous part of Pinocchio is that his nose grows when he lies. And that lasts less than a minute. Still there reasons why the film is so familiar because the scenes of Pinocchio, Jiminy Cricket, Geppetto, Figaro, and Cleo dancing have been shown in a gazillion formats, most memorably to me edited into the DTV music videos that were always shown on The Disney Channel when I was a kid. And they’re worth showing off, because the Disney animators made some remarkable advancements in the depiction of the movement of bodies as well as shadows and water. Nothing prepared me for the nightmare fodder that was Pleasure Island and the children turning into donkeys. And the film carries such a heavy-handed middle class morality that it makes it seem like they want us to think that the kids deserved that. The final act seems tacked on where Pinocchio learns that for some reason Geppetto, Figaro, and Cleo are in the belly of the whale Monstro, but it does give Pinocchio the chance to be a hero. A strange and remarkable film.
Rating: ***1/2
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