4* out of 10*
After watching GDT's latest work "Pinocchio" I went online to see if people were as disappointed as I was. Surprisingly, I couldn't find a single professional review that didn't applaud the film as a wonderful masterpiece. If movie critics don't have the balls to say it, I will: GDT has lost his mojo. What started to show in the mediocre and over-hyped Shape of Water and became even more apparent in the over-long and lacklustre Nightmare Alley is obvious after Pinocchio: GDT is not a very talented storyteller - and subtlety is NOT his strong suit. None of the two mentioned earlier films caught me on an emotional level and Pinocchio also completely failed to do so. It felt a bit like it's main character: wooden and without a true heart.
The film might look brilliant on a technical level but even the optical surface lacks heart. I was surprised that supposedly this was all stop-motion, because it felt like CGI all the way. I don't know what it was exactly but the film simply looks too perfect. The characters and scenery never come across like puppets, everything feels animated. Even if they put in years of handy work, I am sure they glossed over all the frames digitally and enhanced the images.
The first twenty minutes of the film were great and showed GDT's potential. However, as soon as Pinocchio showed up, it all went down the drain. If the film's biggest weakness is its main character, you have a problem. I did not like the design and looks of Pinocchio, at all. He looks creepy. Plus, the dude is a completely obnoxious jack-ass who is super-annoying. His voice was particularly bothersome. How are we supposed to root for him? I knew it was over when he started to sing his first song and my ears started bleeding. That song made absolutely no sense. Pino knows perfect English and knows all the words, until he doesn't when the song need him to.
Why was this a musical anyway? Every single song was terrible and the lyrics were so bad. The music added nothing to the narrative but catapulted me right out of the film, as I had to resist the urge to fast forward whenever they started singing.
The film generally drags a lot and could and should have easily been cut about 30 minutes. It struggles to find its tone and therefore its audience. Is it aimed at children? Too dark and all over the place. At adults? Not really dark and emotional enough and too childish.
Another major flaw is the over-bloated, weak script. The story is messy and all over the place. GDT shoves so many narrative threads and sceneries into the film that it completely loses fo-cus and fails to tell a cohesive story. There is the church theme, the carnival, the war camp (?), the Mussolini thread, the fish monster part, the other-world-hell narrative - it's just too much. All these disjointed scenes sure try to bring across a message. And they do so VERY heavy-handed. As I said, subtlety is not GDT strong suit. For example, we all know that war is horrifying and fascism is evil. However, both these topics were handled way better in GDT's early (and ONLY) masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth. This time around, he just crams these things into the film without saying anything new about them. He just shows them and spells them out. The terror of Mussolini's fascist regime is never felt.
Unfortunately, everything is literally spelled out in this film. Be who you are, don't try to be someone else. Don't project your dead son into a puppet. Religion is dumb. War is terrible. Let go, don't lose yourself in grief. Immortality is worse than dying. Lying is bad but sometimes, when it gets you somewhere, it's fine (??).
One gets the impression that either, GDT doesn't truly care about his messages or he simply doesn't have the narrative capacity to convey them in a convincing manner. He kind of picks them up, looks at them, briefly shows them to us and then drops them to pick up the next shiny idea he finds on the ground. For the viewers, this is unsatisfying and left me feeling stale.
One cannot help but have the impression that GDT only truly cares about himself and showing off all he has accomplished while neglecting careful story-telling. This can best be seen by the fact, that he puts his name in front of the movie title. A thing, film-makers typically do once they are past their prime. GDT marvels in the glory of his own name and the technical flex of the animation. This hubris culminates in the casting of friggin Cate Blanchett - only to have her voice a darn monkey without a single word of dialogue.
The Scottish cricket voiced by McGregor is tasked with watching over Pinocchio and providing him moral guidance to become a good boy, which is set-up big time in the beginning. I have never seen a character fail more miserably at their quest. He does not once guide the guy or even speak to him much during the film, for that matter. In the end, he goes like "Yeah, I did my best, that's all you can ask of me." and is granted his one wish.
I did like Mr. Filch as Geppetto, though, he did a fantastic job! Swinton and Pearlman did al-right, too.
All in all, a pretty big disappointment.
After watching GDT's latest work "Pinocchio" I went online to see if people were as disappointed as I was. Surprisingly, I couldn't find a single professional review that didn't applaud the film as a wonderful masterpiece. If movie critics don't have the balls to say it, I will: GDT has lost his mojo. What started to show in the mediocre and over-hyped Shape of Water and became even more apparent in the over-long and lacklustre Nightmare Alley is obvious after Pinocchio: GDT is not a very talented storyteller - and subtlety is NOT his strong suit. None of the two mentioned earlier films caught me on an emotional level and Pinocchio also completely failed to do so. It felt a bit like it's main character: wooden and without a true heart.
The film might look brilliant on a technical level but even the optical surface lacks heart. I was surprised that supposedly this was all stop-motion, because it felt like CGI all the way. I don't know what it was exactly but the film simply looks too perfect. The characters and scenery never come across like puppets, everything feels animated. Even if they put in years of handy work, I am sure they glossed over all the frames digitally and enhanced the images.
The first twenty minutes of the film were great and showed GDT's potential. However, as soon as Pinocchio showed up, it all went down the drain. If the film's biggest weakness is its main character, you have a problem. I did not like the design and looks of Pinocchio, at all. He looks creepy. Plus, the dude is a completely obnoxious jack-ass who is super-annoying. His voice was particularly bothersome. How are we supposed to root for him? I knew it was over when he started to sing his first song and my ears started bleeding. That song made absolutely no sense. Pino knows perfect English and knows all the words, until he doesn't when the song need him to.
Why was this a musical anyway? Every single song was terrible and the lyrics were so bad. The music added nothing to the narrative but catapulted me right out of the film, as I had to resist the urge to fast forward whenever they started singing.
The film generally drags a lot and could and should have easily been cut about 30 minutes. It struggles to find its tone and therefore its audience. Is it aimed at children? Too dark and all over the place. At adults? Not really dark and emotional enough and too childish.
Another major flaw is the over-bloated, weak script. The story is messy and all over the place. GDT shoves so many narrative threads and sceneries into the film that it completely loses fo-cus and fails to tell a cohesive story. There is the church theme, the carnival, the war camp (?), the Mussolini thread, the fish monster part, the other-world-hell narrative - it's just too much. All these disjointed scenes sure try to bring across a message. And they do so VERY heavy-handed. As I said, subtlety is not GDT strong suit. For example, we all know that war is horrifying and fascism is evil. However, both these topics were handled way better in GDT's early (and ONLY) masterpiece Pan's Labyrinth. This time around, he just crams these things into the film without saying anything new about them. He just shows them and spells them out. The terror of Mussolini's fascist regime is never felt.
Unfortunately, everything is literally spelled out in this film. Be who you are, don't try to be someone else. Don't project your dead son into a puppet. Religion is dumb. War is terrible. Let go, don't lose yourself in grief. Immortality is worse than dying. Lying is bad but sometimes, when it gets you somewhere, it's fine (??).
One gets the impression that either, GDT doesn't truly care about his messages or he simply doesn't have the narrative capacity to convey them in a convincing manner. He kind of picks them up, looks at them, briefly shows them to us and then drops them to pick up the next shiny idea he finds on the ground. For the viewers, this is unsatisfying and left me feeling stale.
One cannot help but have the impression that GDT only truly cares about himself and showing off all he has accomplished while neglecting careful story-telling. This can best be seen by the fact, that he puts his name in front of the movie title. A thing, film-makers typically do once they are past their prime. GDT marvels in the glory of his own name and the technical flex of the animation. This hubris culminates in the casting of friggin Cate Blanchett - only to have her voice a darn monkey without a single word of dialogue.
The Scottish cricket voiced by McGregor is tasked with watching over Pinocchio and providing him moral guidance to become a good boy, which is set-up big time in the beginning. I have never seen a character fail more miserably at their quest. He does not once guide the guy or even speak to him much during the film, for that matter. In the end, he goes like "Yeah, I did my best, that's all you can ask of me." and is granted his one wish.
I did like Mr. Filch as Geppetto, though, he did a fantastic job! Swinton and Pearlman did al-right, too.
All in all, a pretty big disappointment.