Jiminy Cricket (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) strolls into town with his trendy top hat, swinging around his red Bumbershoot without care. Except, he needs to find a place to sleep. In a story I can only imagine, he takes shelter in a snowy Italian town called “Geppetto’s Clock and Wood Working.” Tom Hanks plays Geppetto, and he is a lonely man but a renowned clocksmith. He isn’t bitter. He is very jolly, and he will talk his makeshift family’s heads off. That consists of the most adorable, animated feline you’ve ever seen, Figaro, and a small fish that likes to rise to the surface of her bowl to get a belly rub, Cleo.
Of course, his pine-carved marionette, Pinocchio (Benjamin Evan Ainsworth), is his pride and joy. As they settle for the night, Jiminy watches the older man go to bed, saying a prayer to the wishing star. He prays for Pinocchio to become a real live boy. This way, the older man can finally have a family. Once they fill that hollowed pine body full of eternal life. The Blue Fairy (Cynthia Erivo) arrives. She untangles his strings, runs an update of sorts so he stops repeating every question, and then anoints Jiminy to be his conscience.
Geppetto wakes up to the surprise of his life, but it’s lovely. After enjoying his new family, he decides to send Pinocchio to school. Luckily, Jiminy follows him from a distance. Why is that important? Because Keegan-Michael Key’s Honest John sees a wooden boy and sees dollar signs in his own eyes. While the big JC guides him back to the path to school, Honest John traps him in a mason jar. They promise Pinocchio to make him a star, and the boy thinks this will make his father proud. His performance is so good that he sets himself on fire. He is then stolen by Stromboli (Giuseppe Battiston), who thinks this marionette will make him rich.
Soon after, he tags along with Lampwick, a mischievous boy, and they ride with The Coachman (Luke Evans) on their way to the pleasure island, a land of gluttony that is a parent’s worst nightmare. Of course, once all the kids keep acting bad (overeating, smashing things, acting irresponsible), it enhances the “curse” that turns them into the donkeys they are. Everyone turns into one, and Pinocchio grows a tail and ears.
While this is happening, Geppetto has gone to sea to find his boy. With the help of a seagull named Sofia, Jiminy and Pinocchio find him but are swallowed up by Monstro. Pinocchio, showing learning and intelligence, starts a small fire to “smoke” their way out of the great beast. This opens the largemouth, and with Pinocchio’s spinning legs, they speed out of the mouth and outrun the beast to a nearby island. When Jiminy, Geppetto, Figaro, Cleo, and Sofia wash up on the beach, Pinocchio dies. The Blue Fairy returns to revive him, Pinocchio takes Geppetto’s hand, and they all walk away together.
Based on Carlo Collodi’s The Adventures of Pinocchio, Pinocchio comes to live with the Blue Fairy. In the 1940 film, Pinocchio dies, the Blue Fairy revives him, turns him into a real live boy, and removes the “jack-ass” curse. In this version, Pinocchio is revived by the Blue Fairy, but he stays a pine-wooden marionette.
While the classic film and source material have traditional themes of human conditioning (and the original film version is a metaphor and precursor to Erikson’s psychosocial development), Pinocchio’s journey was about what kind of human the young boy wants to be. While different from the rest, the ending offers a modern component of acceptance of embracing our differences and family being what you make it.
Read More: Pinocchio (2022) Review
