Movie/TV Show Reviews:

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  Robert Zemeckis does not return to Carl Collodi's novel, but revives the 1940 Disney animation. The Mickey Mouse studio has already made it clear several times that re-adapting the same stories is not about looking for new meanings, but about reinforcing the first reading of them. Songs in slightly altered arrangements (choruses are powerful memory generators), live-action copies of previously drawn characters and an untouched plot template. Just a handful of news and a huge delivery from an almost empty nostalgia warehouse. Any change is too risky. Creative initiative is killed by formulas from Excel, and creative enthusiasm is balanced by the number of zeros on the check when signing a contract for a new version of "Pinocchio". Order accepted! Camera! Share! Disney returns to its hermetic, symbolic universe. He is a monopolist of children's imagination and a cultural tycoon, from whom everything is to be derived and to which everything is to be directed. Closed circuit. In "Ralphie Demolce w Internet" the creators will reach for the entire repertoire of famous princesses, reminding that they are to be the point of reference for Wandelope, the only social role models. In turn, in Pinocchio, the cuckoo clocks from the Gepetto collection look like souvenirs from Disneyland. Are you looking for a model with the Lion King? Top row, on the right. Pocahontas? Second row, center. Sleeping Beauty? Slightly lower and to the left. In the case of both of these films, of course, it's a humorous "wink" to the viewer, but between the lines we get another message. The Disney worlds are meant to be the only context. As if nothing before and beyond them existed. Disney is the past. Disney is the future. In "Pinocchio" Zemeckis you will not be surprised by the sentence of the Fairy (Cynthia Erivo) instructing that it is important what kind of heart you have, not who you are on the outside. Being good, brave, and unselfish are fundamental human virtues. Armed with the right mottos, we will set off on a journey we have already traveled and return to known locations. This time, the sterility of the decorations, costumes and props can be painful, the artificiality of the studio lighting turns the cinema into a television theater, and the anachronistic computer animation takes us back in time to the 1990s. Technical incompetence, however, does not take away the carrying capacity of the text itself: its gloom and allegorical clarity of subsequent events. The lopsided setting will not suppress the therapeutic dimension of the parable, and the hasty production does not extinguish the depressive tone inherent in Pinocchio. It is still a dark story of fatherly despair and filial desperation. About the formation of conscience and the ability to assess good and evil. About cruel fate and unlucky cases. On the way, we will encounter child traffickers, the exploitation of minors and we will see hopelessness reaching the horizon. And if one thinks of escaping, it will end up in the digestive system of the sea beast. It's still a series of unfortunate events with a distant light at the end of the tunnel. The sequence on the Island of Joy must make an impression, where future victims have the opportunity to indulge in all the basest instincts before they are turned into donkeys. If anywhere Zemeckis had a bit of space for staging bravado and ideas - quicker camera movement, pace, choreography, decadent mood - it was only there. Maybe now the fairy will come to the creator of "Forrest Gump" and give him a chance to become a director again from a cog in an almost-movie.

  12/5/2022