Pinocchio

Walt Disney's second full length animated feature, Pinocchio is the timeless story of a puppet who strives to be good so that one day  he can become a real boy. This film is rather surprising in a few ways, which I will highlight as I go review this rather wonderful film.

So lets start with the story. As I outlined above, Pinocchio is a young puppet who comes to life thanks to the aid of the Blue Fairy. Aided by his conscience, Jiminy Cricket, Pinocchio sets out in a rather undefined European town to go to school. Like all good intentions, the young puppet is quickly lead astray by several figures on the road to becoming a real boy. While the film does have episodic qualities, things still run really smoothly as each interaction with new characters and locations only strengthen the films strong points.

What are these strong points? For one there is the music, which is easily ranked among Disney's best. Four of the five songs are quite well known, especially When You Wish Upon A Star, and each song serves to strengthen the film and none of them are fully forgettable aside from Geppetto's often overlooked ditty early on in the film.

However, where would a film be without its characters? In a very surprising twist, that has yet to be done again, the villains far outnumber our heroes. The first villains we run into are Honest John and Gideon who appear twice in the film, and both run ins with them lead to Pinocchio being guided to even worse characters. The first of the two that Honest John and Gideon lead Pinocchio to Stromboli, a puppeteer who has sinister intentions for our hero. The second time we come across Honest John and Gideon, they send Pinocchio off to Pleasure Island with the very sinister Coachman. This character is perhaps one of Disney's most frightening as he comes across as very demonic while hiding behind his sly smiles. Our final villain, and my favorite of the group, is the enormous whale Monstro. This character is so well done, from the lead up to the encounter, to the actual action scene on the ocean as Pinocchio and his father try to escape the savage whale. Monstro is very well animated, the way he moves gives the suggestion of having that bulky weight thanks to the timing and animation. The whale himself is also quite scary in the sense that he goes out of his way to bring terror to the ocean life and obviously enjoys what he's doing.

Now for the animation. Aside from one small continuity error with Geppetto's nightcap appearing and disappearing, there is nothing fully wrong with the animation at all. The entire film is enjoyable to look at, whether it is the quaint little village that Pinocchio and his father live in, the various clocks in Geppetto's shop, to the backgrounds on Pleasure Island. On top of this, there are also some really great scenes all throughout the film, two of which include Pinocchio's lie making his nose grow, to the terrifying scene as Lampwick changes into a donkey.

Pinocchio is certainly a very unique entry into the Disney cannon, and is one of the studios best pieces of work. Some of the surprises I mentioned above are the fact that we have a large number of villains, who also never get their comeuppance at all. Another pleasant surprise is how well the moral tone of the story is delivered. The film never comes across as fake or as being overly preachy at all, which can be really hard to pull off. If you  have not seen this movie, I would highly suggest you take the time to see it.

5/5