The Great Movies: "Pinocchio"

Pinocchio
Walt Disney (Producer), 1940

In his review of Pinocchio, Roger Ebert praises the famous children's cartoon both for its groundbreaking animation and for its enchanting storyline. I'm willing to stipulate the former, although as someone born after mid-century the "classic" Disney animation is to me merely the baseline, the ordinary animation that anything else must exceed in order to be any good. That is arguably a pretty strong tribute to its achievement, though.

As far as the storyline, it is just fairytale pablum with no distinction or edge. Ebert praises it for employing archetypes, but how hard is it to employ archetypes? They're archetypes! They're what will pop into our head naturally when we can't be bothered to come up with an original story! And the storytelling here is very slapdash, with the random behavior of the good fairy, the strange role of the narrator cricket, and the plot-generating "father-son" relationship based on an acquaintance of a couple of hours. Pinocchio's real claim to the Lazy Plotting Hall of Fame, though, is in the sequence when the boy-puppet returns to his "father's" home to find it abandoned. At this point, a bird flies by and drops a scroll informing our hero that the old woodworker has been swallowed by a notorious whale. What the hell?

Also, let the record show that the title character is vapid and annoying. As is the very idea of a Hollywood film for children that piously warns against the corrupt lifestyle of show-biz types.

Now no doubt you are thinking that little kids just don't care about this kind of thing, and that Pinocchio and the other similarly lousy Disney animated features have enchanted whole generations of children, and obviously you would be right on both counts. However, it is important to remember that children are not famous for their powers of discrimination. They'll be enchanted by any bright moving object you park them in front of. Starting them off with the classic Disney product isn't likely to do them any harm, but it's setting the bar pretty low.

On an unrelated but noteworthy topic: the Disney studio appears to have had an almost obsessive fascination with the buttocks. There are literally dozens of ass-related gags in Pinocchio -- they come at a rate of almost one per minute in the early scenes -- and it seems like every second shot features one or another character's rear end in an abnormally high, prominent, thrusting position. Once you notice it, it's kind of creepy.

Plot: Italian woodworker, unsatisfied with his prosperous lifestyle, fulfilling work, and hyperintelligent animal companions, whinges about his childlessness until a fairy appears to transform one of his handcrafted puppets into a "real boy." After the blank slate of a child has accumulated two or three hours of world experience, the woodworker sends him out into the world on his own, and the predictable dire consequences ensue. These problems are resolved through supernatural intervention, but then somehow (?) the woodworker gets swallowed by a whale. Whatever.

Visuals: A somewhat more complex version of Saturday cartoon animation, with the exception of the good fairy, who seems to drift in from a different cartoon altogether. A poorly-drawn one.

Dialog: Many gags, little wit, bad music.

Prognosis: My particular DVD copy happened to end with the video for a dance-pop version of "When You Wish Upon a Star" featuring some teenybopper chanteuse and that electronic pitch correction that will soon mark so much current pop music as being contemptibly late aughts. This had the effect of suddenly making the film itself seem like an intellectual masterpiece. But it isn't, really. It's just a kiddie cartoon, and it's not even in the same league with the many far superior kiddie cartoons that have made in the last few decades. Be my guest and let it rest.