Pinocchio (2022): Bad Politics, Bad Performances, Bad Puppet

Robert Zemeckis is back, working once more with star of Cast Away and Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks. Their latest venture together is the 2022 remake of 1940’s Pinocchio. And oh dear, this really is a troubling little film at its heart. Vapid, emotionless, curtailing itself in the blockbuster staples of a modern world yet deeply entrenched in the restrictive capitalist values of the late 19th - early 20th century. I'm not normally one to assign a political lens to films like this as a primary analysis but it was overwhelmingly clear to me that intentionally or not, although I think it was intentional, this is a message of deep capitalist sympathy, anti anarchism and social libertarianism, an unflinchingly strong right-wing film with a childish, inclusivist coat of paint as camouflage against its critics.

The film is one that promotes the benefits of Product and Sale. The hard working Geppetto’s life is classed as silly and pointless by the characters around him because he does not contribute to an economy. Why make these clocks, why have a hobby, if not to sell them for capitalist gain? A question that Geppetto does not argue against, but actually succumbs to. He must sell all his work in order to raise the money to buy a boat - that’s it - rather than a feel-good ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ sequence in which the village helps Geppetto build or buy a boat, which wouldn’t be out of place in a family Disney movie at all. The socialist aspects of the alternative sequence would’ve been much too left leaning for such a film as Zemeckis’ Pinocchio. The message that the 'hucksters and shills' of a free world will lead to damnation and ruin is present throughout, that we upset the world order and turn to animals if we become untethered from what is the right standard of behaviour and conscience. Pleasure Island, a twisted stand-in for the utopian socialist practices of Robert Owens, the systematic warning sign that the fun and games of free, collectivist propaganda belies a dark underbelly of exploitation and betrayal. The sequence in which Pinocchio MUST lie in order to escape his cage is such a bizarre message to include in a children’s film - that it’s okay to lie sometimes, as long as you say sorry afterwards is essentially a mirror of political systems around the world that lead to the exploitation of the lower classes. Originally an Italian parable from 1883 which lambasted the lies and bad behaviour of Italian officials, Disney changed the 1940 version to a more easily consumed story that it’s never too late to do the right thing. This subtraction of an outcry of the oppressed leads to a complete justification of the original message - one that is only driven deeper in the 2022 remake.

Politics aside however, the film itself is just not made well at all, from the standpoint of cinema, this is a film of no value or joy at all. The sloppy CGI, the baffling performances, cheap script, and infuriating tone throughout all combine to leave me wondering what was the point of it all? Several times, the puppet just sets himself on fire, almost for the fun of it. The guy is made of pine? He should have gone up in smoke at least twice in the film. He also spends a good 5 minutes just water skiing while attached to a seagull - having a conversation with Hanks who, although the two are constantly moving towards each other at quite a fair pace, never gets any closer until the film wants them to, and then they’re right next to each other. The editing is just sloppy throughout, I thought the film took place over 2 or 3 days, maybe even a week, but apparently it’s just the one day.

The design of Pinocchio, the puppet, is everything that’s wrong with the slowly stabilised trend of remaking all the old Disney animated films as live action - the designs, and the actions all make sense, and have immense charm in the animated cels, but they simply do not translate to reality at all. The dead, soulless eyes of the ‘real puppet’ are no match for the boyish charm that the animators managed to capture in 1940. It’s bizarre that in these 82 years it’s taken for an ouroboros of a company to eat itself nobody making the decisions towards the top has stopped to realise that it just doesn’t taste nice anymore.

½

An absolutely infuriating cash-in of morals and cinematic decency, the film is embarrassing for all involved, Zemeckis clearly shows his ailment as a filmmaker, unable to capture the cinematic wonder of Cast Away (despite the right wing politics of that film) although given essentially the same brief for the finale of the film (Tom Hanks on a boat, in the middle of the ocean, talking to a personified object). The bastardization of the morals and parable of Pinocchio, and an extremely high chance for Tom Hanks to be nominated for Best Supporting Actor for Elvis, and Worst Supporting Actor for this. I despise it, it's cheap, artificial, pointless, pathetic, worrisome, and quite hateful towards not only the artform but also the audience in which it hopes to find its footing.