Post by Ryan_MYeah on Sept 8, 2022 23:24:49 GMT
God! How confusing will this be once the GDT movie comes out?
What happened, Bob? I can’t figure out whose feet to place the blame of this movie on. Robert Zemeckis, whose sense of fantastical whimsy went way overboard, or Disney, for utterly swallowing him up and mangling his creative voice? Whichever way you slice it, their live-action remake of Disney’s Pinocchio is a tremendous error of judgment.
Starting off with the story itself, many of the animated venture’s familiar beats are largely replicated, but like many of Disney’s prior remakes, those feel diluted in the translation between mediums. Most of which revolving around Pinocchio’s character. I actually found this strips some charm away from Pinocchio’s character, who was never particularly deep to begin with, and yet the remake has made him feel even *less* alive and more wooden. (Also, at one point, it seems to *reward* him for lying.) At best, they only water down the old script, or they strip away their context, and the familiar dialogue no longer makes sense.
What doesn’t help is the frazzled sense of pacing the movie has; its first act deliberately protracted in order to build a sense of character and care (even setting up what will be a significant growing point for Gepetto), but the rest of the movie is so episodic by comparison, feeling like strung together skits. We go from escaping Stromboli’s carriage, and with no breathing room, we’re immediately thrust onto the Coachman’s cart to Pleasure Island. This is something you can more easily get away with in animation, but in live-action, all it does is throw off any sense of rhythm.
That said, Zemeckis isn’t off the hook entirely. I really can’t believe that Zemeckis, a director who usually has a very distinct and proficient eye for visual artistry, would settle his effects budget on the climax from Black Panther. With how much CGI is thrown into your face, it may as well be an animated feature, what with the amount of poorly disguised green screen the actors are composited into, the overly clean digital doubles constructed in post, or the janky, borderline unfinished movement in the animated characters. Not that the effects are stellar, mind you. Bright and colorful, maybe, but - especially in Pleasure Island’s case - also garish and disenchanting.
You have to feel sorry for the talent assembled in the movie, no more so than Tom Hanks. Bless him, he’s trying, but his Gepetto is overplayed and whimsical to the degree of condescending, and it does feel in some way like he’s going through the motions. Cynthia Erivo might as well have not even shown up as the Blue Fairy, and maybe it would have been best if Luke Evans’ Coachman hadn’t.
I don’t want to be too harsh on Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, but after a while, his Pinocchio voice started irritating me, though some of that does lead back to the character itself. As for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, he isn’t terrible, but his over-exaggerated Jiminy Cricket lacks any real sense of charm you’d associate with the character. Keegan-Michael Key and Lorraine Bracco certainly have it worse though, Key over-exhausting his distinct wit as Honest John, and Bracco as a newly created Seagull character that serves as a glorified plot convenience.
Even Alan Silvestri, Zemeckis’ decades long collaborator, doesn’t do much to elevate the film. His orchestral score is perfectly serviceable, but it’s his new songs - which he wrote alongside Glen Ballard - that bring the movie to a halt. Either because of how out of place they are (there’s a salsa number, for crying out loud), or they stop the movie dead in its tracks
Zemeckis is certainly not free of the blame here. Because great a filmmaker as he is, his output in recent years hasn’t inspired much faith in him, and Pinocchio may be one of his worst movies. That said, I also know through seeing Disney corset very distinct directors in the past, that this can’t all be on his head either. One sure saving Grace this film had was its direct to Disney+ release, because as bad as it is right now, can you imagine how much worse it would play to a paying audience?
Starting off with the story itself, many of the animated venture’s familiar beats are largely replicated, but like many of Disney’s prior remakes, those feel diluted in the translation between mediums. Most of which revolving around Pinocchio’s character. I actually found this strips some charm away from Pinocchio’s character, who was never particularly deep to begin with, and yet the remake has made him feel even *less* alive and more wooden. (Also, at one point, it seems to *reward* him for lying.) At best, they only water down the old script, or they strip away their context, and the familiar dialogue no longer makes sense.
What doesn’t help is the frazzled sense of pacing the movie has; its first act deliberately protracted in order to build a sense of character and care (even setting up what will be a significant growing point for Gepetto), but the rest of the movie is so episodic by comparison, feeling like strung together skits. We go from escaping Stromboli’s carriage, and with no breathing room, we’re immediately thrust onto the Coachman’s cart to Pleasure Island. This is something you can more easily get away with in animation, but in live-action, all it does is throw off any sense of rhythm.
That said, Zemeckis isn’t off the hook entirely. I really can’t believe that Zemeckis, a director who usually has a very distinct and proficient eye for visual artistry, would settle his effects budget on the climax from Black Panther. With how much CGI is thrown into your face, it may as well be an animated feature, what with the amount of poorly disguised green screen the actors are composited into, the overly clean digital doubles constructed in post, or the janky, borderline unfinished movement in the animated characters. Not that the effects are stellar, mind you. Bright and colorful, maybe, but - especially in Pleasure Island’s case - also garish and disenchanting.
You have to feel sorry for the talent assembled in the movie, no more so than Tom Hanks. Bless him, he’s trying, but his Gepetto is overplayed and whimsical to the degree of condescending, and it does feel in some way like he’s going through the motions. Cynthia Erivo might as well have not even shown up as the Blue Fairy, and maybe it would have been best if Luke Evans’ Coachman hadn’t.
I don’t want to be too harsh on Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, but after a while, his Pinocchio voice started irritating me, though some of that does lead back to the character itself. As for Joseph Gordon-Levitt, he isn’t terrible, but his over-exaggerated Jiminy Cricket lacks any real sense of charm you’d associate with the character. Keegan-Michael Key and Lorraine Bracco certainly have it worse though, Key over-exhausting his distinct wit as Honest John, and Bracco as a newly created Seagull character that serves as a glorified plot convenience.
Even Alan Silvestri, Zemeckis’ decades long collaborator, doesn’t do much to elevate the film. His orchestral score is perfectly serviceable, but it’s his new songs - which he wrote alongside Glen Ballard - that bring the movie to a halt. Either because of how out of place they are (there’s a salsa number, for crying out loud), or they stop the movie dead in its tracks
Zemeckis is certainly not free of the blame here. Because great a filmmaker as he is, his output in recent years hasn’t inspired much faith in him, and Pinocchio may be one of his worst movies. That said, I also know through seeing Disney corset very distinct directors in the past, that this can’t all be on his head either. One sure saving Grace this film had was its direct to Disney+ release, because as bad as it is right now, can you imagine how much worse it would play to a paying audience?
