Hanks had to act opposite an imagined fish, cat, cricket and wooden boy.

That isn’t to say that Zemeckis’s re-Imagineering of the 1940 Disney classic arrives under conditions that could be called auspicious – certainly the fact that it was shunted to a streaming release suggests less-than-total confidence on the part of the Disney powers that be.ĭespite his pioneering work mixing live action with animation (see: Who Framed Roger Rabbit), the director’s latter-day filmography contains a litany of uncanny valley-set clunkers (see: The Polar Express, A Christmas Carol, Beowulf – or maybe don’t). Even still, maybe this rush of Pinocchios speaks to a fake-news-addled, post-ironic society’s wish – “star light, star bright, first star I see tonight,” to quote Geppetto – for a return to the kind of truth that’s as plain as the nose on your face. The people’s appetite for Carlo Collodi’s magical puppet, whose serialised escapades were first published in book form in 1883, is yet to be determined. That’s not to mention Matteo Garrone’s 2019 Italian-language Pinocchio, featuring Roberto Benigni – who had previously played the titular character in the 2002 film version he himself directed – as the kindly woodcarver Geppetto, father to the little wooden boy. The version to hand, Robert Zemeckis’s live-action-slash-CGI creation, comes straight from Disney’s magic castle conglomerate, and will be countered by Netflix with a stop-motion fable from Guillermo del Toro (coming to a device near you in December).

There are two feature-length, big-name Pinocchio films slated for release this year, which is at least one more than any reasonable person might have expected.

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