Pinocchio is probably one of the more sentimental Disney films. I wouldn't say that it's my absolute favourite (that award goes to Bambi), but it is certainly a classic film that all ages can enjoy.

The film takes a lot of liberties from the original story, but maybe it's for the best. In the book, Pinocchio is a sarcastic and heartless character, and that simply would not work in a Disney film. Even though he's a wooden puppet, like Bambi, he has been modelled to have the features and personality of a young child. Pinocchio is innocent, naïve and sometimes selfish, but he's also playful and often downright adorable.

The film has its dark moments, the most notable being what happens on Pleasure Island, and the fate that befalls poor Lampwick. I feel that, as surreal as it is, it conveys a very poignant message - 'The Devil makes work for idle hands.' I've seen some fans clamour for Disney to make a sequel where all the boys are rescued from that dreadful place. As nice as it sounds, I feel that it would take away the whole meaning of the film.
Pinocchio is dark, but it's never bleak or depressing. It's very funny too, most of the humour coming from the lovable Jiminy Cricket and Gepetto.

The backgrounds are lovely. The village and countryside are typical of rural Italy, but that's not all. The underwater scenes are incredible - remember, this is the first time characters were animated underwater. Although I wonder how Pinocchio managed to breathe?

I'm not so keen on the music. 'When you Wish Upon a Star' isn't my favourite Disney song, but it's still quite good. It sure beats any of the Phil Collins music that's piped in over Tarzan soaring through a plastic jungle.

As beautiful as it is, Pinocchio does have a some minor flaws. I felt that the goldfish character was completely unecessary, cute as it was. Also, I felt that the story was a little 'Americanized.' But I've seen worse - take a look at Aladdin. Who's going to think that real Arabs are like that? Not me, that's for sure. Don't let it bother you.

I like Pinocchio a lot more than I have before. It's warm, touching, funny, atmospheric and is somewhat a cautionary tale. It's so much more than 'a cute movie about a puppet.'

Having read Carlo Collodi’s Original story (well a translated version at least), it is IMO, a bit overwritten. Much of this has probably much to do with the fact that the author was paid by the word. You can imagine what this arrangement did to the length; lots of filler and much pointless padding. One more thing is that for the most part, it is relentlessly bleak. Within the world of the text Pinocchio gets his feet burnt of, is beating up, hung and left for dead, thrown in prison, almost thrown into the fires of Stombolli, turned into a donkey, thrown into the sea to drown, and throughout thinks that his beloved Blue Fairy has died multiple times. In short it is a extremely morbid story and while the Disney adaptation of it leaves quite a bit of it’s dark theme intact, an injection of humor does wonders to bring it back from the depressing themes of the original story.

Disney’s second film is a sum of all the parts that came before it, that is true. Pinocchio may not have invented the multiplane camera, or indeed have been the first color piece, yet I think it used the tricks that those devices allow more freely than anything that came before and arguably since. The problem is that this freedom of use of technology (not to mention the restart it went through) caused it to be extremely expensive to make. Another thing that added to the cost was when Disney decided to restart the project.

Restart? Yes the whole film was redesign from top to bottom while in the middle of the production phrase. Walt, unhappy that the film had a few (insofar as Disney was concerned) distinct problems: a) with it starring character: how much should he be a puppet and how much real boy. At the start the animation verged more on the puppet side of things, but Pinocchio was then decided to be more mischievous and lively, to be more like a child,… and b) Disney looked at the film and thought that it needed something that could act as a anchor for the audience, something that could also act as narrator, he found the answer in a certain cricket.

Generally, Jiminy Cricket is a bit character in the book, who warns Pinocchio that his wicked ways will come back to haunt him in turn. The puppet, not wanting to hear this, throws a heavy iron hammer at the insect, killing the bug outright (although if memory serves me he reappears in the Blue Fairy’s house), although its advice was something the puppet would later come to understand. Redesigned to the point were his resemblance to his real life counterpart was negligible, he came to look like a human, to quote his designer… he’s a cricket cause everyone calls him a cricket.

Although the film cuts a immense amount of the original story out, the most iconic parts are at least still present and correct. Pleasure Island is as nightmarish a place as intended, its secret evil underlining the fun to be had there, and yes the transformation sequence was always intended to be frightening (in fact I believe the initial animation was rejected for not being scary enough).

When you deal with fairy tales of this length, it is highly likely that you will find yourself meeting a deus ex machina element somewhere along the line. Due to the nature of the original material, Pinocchio has this more often than most. Collodi originally ended the story on Pinocchio being hung and left to die by the paws of the fox and cat. The publisher received what these days would be called letters of complaint over this ending and Collodi was forced to save the popular character’s life and give him more adventures to go on. In fact the first part of the original story has no mention of Pinocchio’s quest to become a real boy, which came about much later in the phase (I suppose that even in the old, old days they had retcons).

Some moments of the film are wonderfully realized and were, at the time, unsurpassed in terms of the level of details involved. Like the morning after the first night, where the camera pans through the rooftops of the city, were we see numerous folk going about themselves in their daily lives; an elaborate piece, if somewhat overdone and a little on the wrong side of irrelevant. Another thing that is great, from an animation point of view, is the moving cage that Stomboli throws Pinocchio in. Always in motion, it may be one of the first instances were I don’t mind the use of rotoscoping (which it is); because where in living objects it looks lifeless, the cage, being a man-made device can get away with the movements (course it helps that the rotoscoping was effectively cleaned up properly).

However the Blue Fairy is more obtrusive in this fashion, being a product of pure rotoscope, but fortunately scenes with her are few. The water effects in the later part of the film, both above and under the sea, are still as powerful today as it was back when it first aired in theatres. This is partly because it has taken computer technology up to the near present to catch up with it in terms of sheer screen potency.

One thing one could say about Pinocchio’s art, is that it relies on its ability to do just about everything traditional animation can do; to the point of visual overkill. From the many and varied clocks and contraptions in Gepetto’s workshop, to the scenes of town life and crowds. With such beautifully rendered artwork, it is easy to see where the money went on the film and why few of Disney’s future films would attempt anything so insanely grand again, at least until technology caught up with studio needs.

Pinocchio’s songs are as memorable as any of Disney’s greatest features, especially the fledging films, working seamlessly into the story structure; like so much of the film, their planning was immaculately thought through. The score is powerful and subtle when it needs to be those things and compliments the story’s European roots.

Then, there are problems, and not just with the obvious rotoscoping of the Blue Fairy. The characters are generally hard to emote with, Pinocchio may be mischievous to a point, but he’s also a total naïve that pretty much believes everything he is told. To add insult to injury, he rarely listens to Jiminy, his elected conscience and confident, or at the least is too easily swayed by the fox John Foulfellow. Talking of Jiminy, though he is carrying much of the weight of the movie, as both the narrator (of sorts) and an anchor of reason, he sometimes comes across as being more interested in himself than with his charge.

Pinocchio may be the sum of everything that preceded it and is sometimes too cluttered for it own good, much like the original book from which it was based. Still it is still an immensely great film, if not quite an absolutely perfect one.

I've always enjoyed this movie. The animation is great, the characters are interesting, the songs are good, and the story is entertaining. This is a great Disney classic and if you haven't seen it check it out sometime.

A very fun and charming, yet edgy disney film.

I didn't exactly emotionally connect with the characters as I did in Dumbo, but still very nice characters. Great animation, fun music, and good story, even though in one or two scenes it can get preachy.

A very important film at disney, which is also home of probably their best song, yet "When you wish upon a Star." A great flick, with a good message and worth a few viewings! 3 1/2 stars!

Well for some reason, out of all the "Golden Age masterpieces" from Disney, Pinocchio is my least favorite. It just never gets as powerful or as gripping as Bambi. But you also can't deny that its story, with its theme of a boy trying to do good, holds a lot more relevance to today's generation than many of Disney's other stories, like the princess movies' "find true love" themes or Bambi's "preserve nature" theme. The songs and music are still far superior to modern Disney's songs and music, as is the animation. The attention to detail in the character animation and backgrounds is simply astounding.

But Pinocchio is more than just a technical marvel. The characters are simply wonderful, from the two main characters to the two hilarious side villains to the rather terrifying main villain. The story is superbly written. You just can't deny that many of this movie's scenes are just downright scary. But they still hold some weight and meaning.

My only nitpick, and the reasons why this movie is my least favorite of the golden age movies, is that it tries so hard at the end. First comes the dues ex machina element when Gepetto's note magically comes floating out of the sky. Then it tries to grab your emotion by making it seem like Pinocchio is dead and then having him reborn as a real boy. I guess that's the only effective culmination after all his sacrifices, but for some reason, this movie never seems as natural as Dumbo or Bambi or The Fox and the Hound. But at any rate, it's still a top notch piece of entertainment.

Inkwolf's review of 'Snow White' made me face a question. If a film is aesthetically good, is it good forever, or can the mere passage of time render it ordinary or even bad? This is an especially tough question when faced with 'Pinocchio', which rather has a reputation as the 'Citizen Kane' of animated films.

I'm going to be a bit of a fence-sitter on this. There is no doubt that 'Pinocchio' is less enjoyable now than it would have been 64 years ago, and less technically stunning- and ultimately, yes, I think this does have to come off the score. On the other hand, to reduce such a milestone movie to a rating of 2.0 or something seems too much, so I'm giving Pinocchio 3 stars. If you're an animation historian, add 1. If you think 2D animation is already looking dated, take 1 off.

First of all, why was this movie groundbreaking? It wasn't the first colour animated feature. But since 'Snow White' Disney had invented the multiplane camera (even Orson Welles didn't invent the 'infinite depth of field' camera for 'Citizen Kane') - which allowed visual effects which must have astonished audiences in 1940. The camera could zoom in through three-dimensional scenes, with parts of the drawing passing out of the frame and going out of focus. And nobody had ever tried to make a realistic colour, underwater animated sequence. The underwater scenes in Pinocchio still look impressive today.

When I said that it was the 'Citizen Kane' of cartoons though, I should add that 'Citizen Kane' is a film I admire more than like. To a large extent the same is true of 'Pinocchio'. It was never one of my favourite Disney movies, and that can't be blamed just on it's age, because 'Bambi' still blows me away, and it's only two years younger.

I think the fact that it doesn't really grab me emotionally is just a personal thing. On a more objective level, there isn't much to really criticise about the film - except perhaps that you do get the sense, particularly in the first 15 minutes or so, that it gets a bit carried away with its own inovation. Quite a few early sequences seem a bit needlessly prolonged, while the camera tells you 'look what we can do!' A minor quibble, perhaps.

I might also add that the sequence on 'pleasure' island is, in my opinion anyway, one of the few genuinely nightmarish sequences in a Disney film. I don't actually know if it was supposed to be, but if the object of this film was to scare boys into being good, I can imagine it having the desired effect.

It's a long time since I've seen 'Snow White', so I can't be positive about this, but I would say that Pinocchio is less offputtingly old-looking, but it definately does look and feel old, in a way that the Disney movies of the 50's don't, and which for the most part, neither does 'Bambi' (quite possibly because much of the animation in 'Bambi' was so realistic).

Pinocchio is an important film, and even today it's a good one, if you can tolerate its stylistic antiquity - but if you're really just interested in the latest thing, and have no interest in animation history, you're probably not going to enjoy it.