Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Or Netflix’s, Carlo Collodi’s, Not-Disney’s, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio; it feels like we’ve got Pinocchio coming out of both ends right now, with last year’s overhauling of the classic kids story by Matteo Garrone probably the best of the bunch. But you’d probably have to have a wooden heart to not get something from Del Toro’s stop-motion version for the streamer, which has admirable detail and a fresh take on the story, even if it eventually falls between several stools as entertainment.

‘In this world, you get what you give,’ is part of the new, radical advice given to young Pinocchio, a puppet brought to life by a master craftsman, Geppetto (David Bradley). Devastated by the loss of his son in a WWII bombing raid, Geppetto goes on a boozed-up bender and creates a wooden parody of his lost child, one brought to life by the Blue Fairy (Tilda Swinton’s usual headmistressy turn, groan) and the lad is wanting nothing more than to be a real boy. His story is narrated by an eyeless cricket called Sebastian, which is voiced by Ewan McGregor; this spindly creature was making his home in the tree that Geppetto used wood from to make his puppet son…

‘Why do they like him and not me?’ wonders fresh-faced Pinocchio as he examines a wooden effigy of Jesus Christ that his father is repairing in the local church; there are big questions to be derived from the original text, but this version seems to have problems finding the right focus. This is certainly set in a non-fairy tale world, with liberal cursing (‘freaking, bugger, mook’), smoking cigarettes and the rise of Italian dictator Mussolini as the inevitable dash of Trump-era commentary. Pinochio ends up meeting Il Duce, and going to a paint-ball training camp, but Del Toro and his co-director Mark Gustafson eventually bring things back for a traditional finale involving Geppetto stuck inside a giant dogfish, some kind of sea monster instead of the usual whale. There’s also a horrible, slavering monkey creature played by Cate Blanchett that I could have done without.

As well as a slavish attention to visual detail with some help from the Jim Henson company, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio has a more knowing script than most kids films; Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz) spits out ‘All these kids are for sale,’ as he follows the lead of Tom Hanks in the Elvis movie to use contractual management to turn his shows into as tight a grift as possible. The animation is often impressive in the exaggerated style of Henry Selick more than Jan Švankmajer, but the songs are scattered, and for all the historical and religious allusions, the result is just not that different from the usual wooden story.

‘Will he eventually die? I think so,’ Sebastian Cricket reassures us towards the end of this overlong, overstuffed film; it’s something of a relief to picture the little tyke finally popping his wooden clogs after this exhausting adventure. Guillermo del Toro seems to have been so intent on making period of fantasy classics that his touch with reality seems weak; he’s not made a film set in any kind of recognisably modern world since 1997’s Mimic. Netflix seems to offer great directors a train-set to resurrect their discarded ideas, but what the streamer can’t conceal is the reasons the projects were originally discarded; this Pinocchio is too worldly for kids, yet doesn’t have enough dramatic heft for an adult audience.