The ‘Pinocchio’ Remake Is Even Worse Than We Imagined

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Pinocchio Is a Nightmare!

Disney’s 1940 animated film Pinocchiois a movie in which a pile of wood comes to life, is tragically separated from his father figure, has his face painfully modified as punishment for innocently telling a lie, is conned into becoming a child actor, is kidnapped, meets a human trafficker that delights in turning boys into screaming donkeys that are then sold into forced labor, is swallowed by a whale, and is stalked by an insect throughout the entire ordeal. And this is meant to be for children.

Being traumatized for the rest of your life by a Disney cartoon is a rite of passage, for which the Mouse House has, with a morbid glee, provided its service for generations. Did watching a lion’s brother murder him while his son wailed in horror as he fell to the ground not scar—heh—you enough? Maybe watching Baby Quasimodo be tossed into a well will do it.

Can you read the words “The Fox and the Hound” without bursting into tears? Perhaps it’s time to revisit the scene in Bambi where the poor deer’s mother is shot and killed—a scene that upset my brother and me so intensely as kids that my aunt’s improvised recourse to comfort us was to tell us that “Bambi’s mom just went shopping.”

There is something to say about the importance of these moments in the formative films of our childhood, and the way they helped us develop the emotional intelligence to deal with grief, loss, and loneliness. The best of those movies found a beauty in that darkness, which is certainly what made Pinocchio so special. That magic dances around how deeply upsetting a movie that can be distilled to the above plot description can be.

Maintaining that balance is so necessary, and so signature, that it’s hard to imagine how a remake could possibly accomplish it. Yet as predictable as the failure of the new Disney+ remake already was, Robert Zemeckis’ Pinocchio is a disaster of such epic proportion that it borders on astounding.

I suppose, at one point, there was a thrill to watching Disney’s so-called “live-action” remakes of its classic cartoons. (A majority of them, this one included, are overwhelmingly made using CGI animation.) Nostalgia is like a sourdough starter: It needs to be fed to stay alive. Whether or not these movies were necessary was besides the point. They were exciting—a chance to revisit a story that you loved! Sometimes there was even some fun casting involved; we’d get to see a famous person embarrass themselves by trying to sing a Disney standard.

But most of the movies, from The Lion King to Beauty and the Beast, have ended up being uninspired, shot-for-shot, uncanny-valley remakes of the originals. (I’d argue that the more realistic approach taken by Mulan and Pete’s Dragon has fared the best.) The initial fun of returning to these films in a new way has been replaced by exhaustion and skepticism. This endeavor was never really about delighting the hearts of Disney-lovers, after all. It was about making a fast buck from a captive audience.

I truly believe you would have to be held captive to choose to watch this Pinocchio remake, let alone find much about it that’s redeeming.

Tom Hanks plays Geppetto, the recluse clockmaker who lost his wife and crafts a marionette to serve as a surrogate son to keep him company. Even though, again, this is a “live-action” take on the story, the Pinocchio that he creates is not a practical wooden doll, which would arguably be cool. This CGI Pinocchio also looks exactly like the original cartoon version. The surreal effect of this is that you can’t shake the notion that you’re watching Tom Hanks in a wig talking in an Italian accent to a Pinocchio doll he bought at the Disney Store in 1994.

(If there were any doubts about this movie doubling as a craven marketing ploy, Geppetto’s wall of cuckoo clocks are all fashioned after characters from other Disney films.)

The sight of this cartoon version of Pinocchio frolicking through a real world with actual humans is as bizarre as, well, if you looked outside right now and saw a cartoon version of Pinocchio frolicking through the real world with actual humans. There is an image from early in the film of Pinocchio curiously reaching out his hand to touch a pile of horse manure. It is seared into my brain forever.

Pinocchio isn’t the only character whose strange, photorealistic—but still glaringly fake—likeness doesn’t work. Jiminy Cricket here looks more like an actual cricket and less like a charming cartoon conscience, which… congrats to whoever thought a fun thing to do with the Pinocchio movie was to make the bug look more real. The fox that cons Pinocchio, the seagull that helps save him, and the donkey versions of the Pleasure Island boys are all CGI as well. There are several large-scale production numbers that are performed by entirely animated marionettes, during which you can’t help but wonder what the point of this live-action farce is when you’re just watching some cartoons do a lil’ dance.

The technology used for these characters and sequences must be more sophisticated and advanced than most of us can imagine or comprehend. Good for everyone involved; it still looks fake. As I was watching an animated whale in a CGI ocean swallow Tom Hanks and a cartoon Pinocchio, I got a notification on my phone that the Queen had died. I haven’t quite unpacked yet what the metaphor is, but I know that there is one.

There are things that sort of work…I guess? Cynthia Erivo’s appearance as the Blue Fairy is an ethereal delight, complete with her rendition of “When You Wish Upon a Star.” I don’t hate Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s Jiminy Cricket voice performance. And, if I’m being honest, I thought that Tom Hanks in grandpa drag going full-throttle emotion while running around a soundstage talking to a CGI marionette was touching, in a kind-of mortifying way.

But, to borrow from the film’s script: When will these become “real, live, living” movies? The half-assed, animated/live action-hybrid thing is abysmal. In Pinocchio, our hero must prove that he is brave, truthful, and unselfish to get what he wants. Disney needs to prove that these remakes are not cynical, uninspired, and childhood-ruining if they want us to keep paying attention.

Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight: I wish I may, I wish I might, convince Disney to stop making these godforsaken live-action remakes that give me such a fright.

Kelly and Dolly, Be Still My Heart

There are two eras of my life. There’s the one before Kelly Clarkson and Dolly Parton released a slowed-down, shockingly emotional duet update of “9 to 5;” and there’s the period after. Now, I’m a changed, enlightened person—a heightened version of myself. I see clearer. My heart beats stronger. I no longer say “you too” when a waiter says “enjoy your meal.”

Like the recent Britney Spears and Elton John duet, “Hold Me Closer,” this is an entirely new, modern arrangement of a familiar song. But unlike the obvious dance-ready remix of the Britney-Elton collab, this one replaces Parton’s famous fingernail-typewriter effect that gave the songs its adrenaline with a melancholic swirl and a thumping, dramatic beat. All these decades later, this take on “9 to 5” more accurately reflects what going to work feels like today: It makes you want to cry.

Kelly Clarkson fans were already soaring this week before she dropped this triumph. It’s the 20th anniversary of when she won American Idol. Her daytime talk show is about to premiere in Ellen’s old time slot. She announced a new album and tour. There are plenty of pop stars worth stanning. but Kelly never falters. She’s the first elected official of my lifetime to serve her constituents flawlessly.

The Two Toughest Emmy Categories

The Emmy Awards are on Monday night. There are a handful of things I’m really rooting for: Melanie Lynskey to win for Yellowjackets; Jennifer Coolidge to deliver the Emmy speech we’ve all been waiting to hear for The White Lotus; Abbott Elementary to collect a truckload of trophies.

But there’s two categories in which, if I were an Emmy voter, it would be impossible for me to choose a winner.

There’s Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. The nominees are: Rachel Brosnahan (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), Quinta Brunson (Abbott Elementary), Kaley Cuoco (The Flight Attendant), Elle Fanning (The Great), Issa Rae (Insecure), and Jean Smart (Hacks). That is a stacked list. There are sentimental favorites and people who have already gotten their due. But this is a category in which every nominee gave a performance that should win. So how do you pick between them? My choice is different every time I look at this list.

Even with conventional wisdom saying it’s a race between Brunson and Smart, I don’t know how that shakes out.

Then there’s Supporting Actress in a Comedy Series. It’s not that every nominee here is win-deserving, like in Lead Actress. It’s that half of them are, and, again, I have no clue how to decide between them. Can one really pick a victor between Janelle James and Sheryl Lee Ralph for Abbott Elementary? Did anyone do better work than Hannah Einbinder in the finale of Hacks? Is it possible to match the force that is Hannah Waddingham in Ted Lasso?

I have every confidence in Emmy voters to make the most boneheaded choices and not award any of those four women. But this is the rare year where I’m really eager to see how things shake out.

The Queen’s Death Was a Twitter Nightmare

The death of the Queen surfaced charged feelings, the nuances of which I would never presume to weigh-in on.

Social media is a wild west after events like these, with a crossfire of cringe-inducing takes from people centering news on themselves, random brands posting embarrassing remembrances, and, of course, gallows humor. (I don’t necessarily support off-color jokes about a person’s death, but I am also human and can’t help but laugh at them.)

That said, there were two posts that broke me. The first cracked me open with laughter. As my newsfeed filled up with screenshots of solemn tweets from brands that have no business tweeting about the Queen, I saw this.

And then there’s this one. I saw it minutes after I heard the news about the death. Reader, I cried.

Kate Berlant Stays Flawless

Popular comedian and actress Kate Berlant is winning this week. She has managed to escape all of the drama surrounding her new movie, Don’t Worry Darling, and she opened her new play, a one-woman show called Kate, that might be one of the most sensational pieces of theater I’ve ever seen. It is so smart, inventive, and hilarious, and it will make you cry in a way that is totally confusing, catch you by surprise, yet feel so cathartic. I’d say go see it immediately, but I don’t think you can actually get a ticket; the response has been so enthusiastic. So instead, I get to gloat that I’ve seen it :)

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