Dec 9, 2022

-Guillermo del Toro's "Pinocchio" Review Summary: Netflix's stop-motion adaptation is a gem.

Guillermo del Toro's "Pinocchio," Netflix's most ambitious and celebrated animated feature of the year, makes its worldwide debut this Friday.

Since its premiere at the BFI London Film Festival in October, the stop-motion feature has received a steady stream of critical reviews at other festivals and events before its limited theatrical release last Friday. And so far, the literary world's most famous marionette has been well-received.

Pinocchio, by del Toro and co-director Mark Gustafson, has a 97% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. This capped off a great year for Netflix animation, which also ranks ahead of Netflix's other five original animated feature releases for 2022, "Scrooge: A Christmas Carol" (31%), "Wendell & Wilde" (80%), "My Father's Dragon" (88%), "Apollo 10 1/2 A Space Age Childhood" and "Kaiju" (94%).

Critics have praised Pinocchio's stunning visuals, with some calling it the best stop-motion film in years. Del Toro himself has praised the work of the artists involved in the film, even describing it as such in the film's credits. Del Toro tweeted his reasons:

"One of the key steps in Pinocchio (2022) is to credit the animators up front alongside the cast. And to showcase the artistry that makes the performance possible, he is touring with the puppets and Georgina Haynes.

Reviewers were also impressed by the film's treatment of complex themes, presented in a way that adults can understand and children can appreciate. Especially if parents are willing to talk about the more specific historical and complex issues that the characters face.

Here's what has been said about Guillermo del Toro's "Pinocchio":

The Hollywood Reporter's Leslie Felperin is a stop-motion superfan and enjoys the film's deliberate imperfections :

I've rarely met a stop-motion animated film that I didn't like, especially if it's on the edge of being too creepy for kids, and as a critic who loves all film adaptations of "Pinocchio," this film is right in the sweet spot. According to the film's press notes, the fact that the filmmakers intentionally made the animation a bit awkward, drawing attention to the technology and not smoothing it out as modern technology would easily do, is the maraschino cherry of the sweet spot: ...... Additionally, the delicious sprinkles of the uncanny valley are sprinkled throughout the character designs of the living, non-tree characters. They are expressive, but not overly expressive, and constantly remind us of the fact that we are watching a stop-motion puppet show.

Rafael Motamayor, a contributor to Indiewire, began his review by praising the film's stop-motion animation as the best he had seen in years:

Guillermo del Toro's "Pinocchio" is the most beautifully made stop Reimagining a classic fantasy tale through motion animation, it is a powerful, life-affirming story of father and son about acceptance and love in the face of pain, misery, and fascism, and is arguably the best film of the decade.

AV Club's Luke Y. Thompson praised the claymation DNA found in the film, thanks to co-director and Will Vinton Studios veteran Mark Gustafson. For the most part, the humans are so caricatured that it is surprising to empathize with them, but the voice acting and little gestures sell the illusion. Unlike the ultra-smooth stop-motion of Wendell & Wild, the animation in this film, presumably using a lower frame rate, retains the herky-jerky quality of older works in this medium, which is interspersed throughout with classic film This is in harmony with the allusions and references to classic films scattered throughout.

Variety critic Guy Lodge praised the film for its aesthetic that shows great respect for audiences of all ages:

[T]he animation is a delight, with eerie visual textures such as the quivering viscera of the whale and the harsh, towering lines of the fascist architecture of the 1930s. It enjoys and resists cuddling at every turn. The sophisticated color palette of russet, tan, and sunset oak is guided by Pinocchio's lumbering constitution and the flame that is his greatest enemy, which appears repeatedly. ...... Aesthetically and narratively, the film gives young audiences a sense of taste and intelligence that is matched by their adult counterparts: ......

Robert Abele of the Los Angeles Times recognizes the film's potential as a tool for parents to initiate meaningful conversations with their children: ["By its candor about impermanence and humility, it could spark important parent-child exchanges about love, flaws, and the need to spend meaningful time together. will be able to evoke. With a big screen, big theme like del Toro's, "Pinocchio" is a film that deserves a place in the catalog of experiences shared by close families.