On Nov. 9, the highly anticipated “Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio” was released. The motive of this piece provided by Guilermo Del Toro was to put his own spin on it, as done by director Hal Sutherland in 1987 with the release of “Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night.” Both movies are a spin-off of the original “Pinocchio” released in 1940 by Walt Disney productions, which all stem from the 1883 book by Carlo Collodi, which I think is important to know considering Del Toro’s plot. The movie comes out the gate introducing Carlo as the son of Geppeto, who eventually makes Pinocchio later in the film. I would guess the use of the boy named Carlo was not a coincidence and Del Toro did this as a tribute to the original “Pinocchio” creator. In this creative spin-off, Pinocchio was built by Geppeto as a coping mechanism for the tragic loss of his son Carlo, who he loved very much. Pinocchio was given life by a magical figure to bring happiness and life back into the man’s life.
For starters, the creativity to make this movie, as sentimental as it was, is impressive. What makes this movie different from other spin-offs is that the plot is deeper. I believe that watching this movie, the scenes are so strong that the audience is able to feel what the characters are feeling. The first few scenes involving Carlo made the movie. After the way he passed, viewers could see how much pain Geppeto had felt. Del Toro did a great job with emphasizing how detrimental it is to lose someone close to you, let alone your only son. Del Toro emphasized this emotion so much that for the rest of the movie viewers had no choice but to root for Geppeto and hope his happiness would be restored. Maybe more importantly, Del Toro did well with the character of Pinocchio. In particular, he did a good job displaying how foreign everything was for Pinocchio, which caused him to disobey commands simply because he genuinely didn’t know better. Though, there was one thing that wasn’t foreign to Pinocchio—which was loving Geppeto. Overall, I think this movie was creative, entertaining and watching had me thoroughly intrigued with every scene.
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