Starring Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton, Ron Perlman, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Burn Gorman, Tim Blake Nelson

Directed by Guillermo del Toro & Mark Gustafson

Netflix, in cinemas now and on Netflix from 9 December

Carlo Collodi’s classic tale of the puppet boy reimagined against the backdrop of Fascist Italy under Benito Mussolini.

Huh! You wait for ages for a new Pinocchio movie and then three come along at once! Well, maybe not exactly at once.

Back in August 2020, my first trip to the cinema after lockdown was to see Matteo Garrone’s Italian live action remake. Perhaps I was particularly well disposed to it as I was so overjoyed to be in a darkened cinema gawping wide-eyed at a big screen again. I loved its Singing Ringing Tree weirdness, was terrified by its uncompromising puppet lynching, and disturbed by its suggestions of paedophilia.

Earlier this year I attempted to watch Disney+’s live action remake of the original Disney animation, but I can’t offer any kind of judgement. Despite several attempts, I couldn’t make it past about forty minutes.

And last night I saw Guillermo del Toro’s new stop-motion re-imagining. There’s a few weeks to go, but this may well prove to be my cinematic highlight of 2022.

I’ve always had something of a love/hate relationship with Pinocchio. While the story of an inanimate’s quest for humanity is fascinating and haunts almost all the robot and AI sci-fi that have spawned in its wake, I find the 1940 Disney version cloying. Indeed, all the versions I’ve seen to date – even the good ones – are cursed with an episodic moralising, which is perhaps inherent in the source material.

Much has already been written about the relocation of the story to fascist Italy, and this certainly works brilliantly, but the real genius of this adaptation is that Del Toro flips the story completely on its head. Guillermo’s Pinocchio recognises early on that being mortal is nothing to write home about. There are lots of advantages to being made of wood. Gone is the episodic, moralising structure, replaced by a developing character-driven narrative where expectations are confounded and the motivations that drive the story are inverted, to become complex, truthful and genuinely moving.

Familiar characters are reinvented with developing, satisfying inter-connecting arcs. Sebastian J. Cricket (voiced superbly by Ewan McGregor) lives, literally, in Pinocchio’s heart. The Blue Fairy is bisected into two new characters (Tilda Swinton playing both) with a far more nuanced role than the patronising deus ex machina of Disney’s original. The relationship between Count Volpe (Christophe Waltz) and Spazzatura (a mangey maltreated monkey, voiced by Cate Blanchett) is an inspired amalgam of the familiar Stromboli, Fox and Cat characters, now with added light and shade. If I’m sounding overly abstract it’s because to say more would be to spoil the inventive surprise of the adventure del Toro takes us on.

And then there’s the animation. Peerlessly lit, it shares the immersive, tactile quality we have come to associate with Aardmen over the years, full of witty detail that makes you want to watch it all over again to catch the stuff you missed first time round. Obviously, this isn’t Claymation. The movie, which is bursting with life, feels carved from something very solid.

With its woody textures made so gloriously animate, the medium is, quite literally, the message, underlined with bitter irony, as Geppetto carves a crucified Christ for the village church. It’s a beautiful, classical likeness, but unlike the crude puppet child, this wooden Christ remains resolutely un-resurrected.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio is a terrific movie, but is it a children’s film? Hmm. It’s nowhere near as disturbing as Matteo Garrone’s 2019 iteration, but it is dark and complex, and its finer subtexts are very adult. I’m not sure I’d risk it on anyone under eight in the cinema, but on a small screen its more challenging imagery will be less intimidating. As to whether the story will hold for younger kids… I’ll just have to watch it again with my child brain plugged in.

Verdict: This is a truly wonderful piece of cinema, perhaps del Toro’s real masterpiece. Try to see it in a movie theatre if you possibly can. Flawless. 10/10

Martin Jameson