Le straordinarie avventure di Pinocchio

Saw it on DVD, pretty good transfer from film. I can't give it a very high rating as a film, it was a bit muddled at times in exactly what it was trying to convey. But the wooden puppet looked very life-like, his "education" was handled very well, and in the end the message of where life really comes from is very clear. My favorite part, however, was listening to Stevie Wonder sing the songs he wrote for the film.

I bought the DVD to give to my grandchildren, 7 and 10. It will be interesting to see how they react to it.

Another film watched in preparation for the "How Did This Get Made Podcast". Whilst it's certainly not great, or even good, it's a little better than most of the other films I've watched for them.

Lonely Geppetto (Martin Landau) fills his time making puppets, in the Italian town he lives in. One day he carves a new marionette out of a magical piece of wood and that night it comes to life. This puppet, Pinocchio (Voiced by Jonathan Taylor Thomas), struggles with his naivety and his trusting nature and soon his misfortune is exploited by Lorenzini (Udo Kier) who makes him the star of his puppet show.

So first, I have to say that I struggled enormously with the version of this film that's on UK Amazon Prime. I don't think it was my internet connection, as both immediately before and afterwards streaming was working fine, but whilst viewing this film I was plagued with freezes, blank screens and framerate issues. It very nearly rendered it unwatchable and I kept having to stop and restart the film in order to make it bearable.

From what I could make out then, visually the film was pretty strong. There's a lot of excellent work done in set design and background effects. The Czech Republic doubles for Italy nicely at whatever year the story was supposed to be set in (Mid 1800s?). The visual effects towards the end are pretty solid too. It's odd, but interesting, to see so many UK comedy actors flown out for very little. Dawn French has two scenes, John Sessions one and Griff Rhys Jones has about one line. Big fan of Bebe Neuworth in anything, even if here she and Rob Schneider are pretty tiresome in this.

The puppet of Pinocchio, though really well made, is a bit creepy. There are general issues with the film stock used and the quality of the dialogue recording (even allowing for the issues I was having streaming it). It looks like it could have been made twenty years earlier than 1996, but what's very 1996 is the CGI cricket that fulfils the conscience role. It's both terrible to look at and the script given to veteran vocal performer David Doyle is full of modern idioms and the worst self-referential puns you could imagine.

Whilst I admire the effort that's gone into it, "The Adventure of Pinocchio" has aged like a fine yoghurt and unfortunately wasn't that good to begin with.

This is a lavish, sumptuously-mounted version of the classic story. Great costumes and location work, with Prague as 18th-century Italy. Top-notch FX: Pinocchio himself; Pepe (not Jiminy) Cricket; a hUge, whale-like sea monster; boys morphing into jackasses.

Good cast: Martin Landau (fresh from his Oscar-winning portrayal of Lugosi in "Ed Wood") as Gepetto; Genevieve Bujold, whom I hadn't seen in ages (and who is aging very nicely), as his long-term love interest; Udo Kier as the heavy; plus an assortment of other character actors mostly unknown to me.

Altogether well-done, its only drawbacks being a couple of lame songs, plus occasional slapstick for the kiddies. And it must be admitted, the Diz cartoon is a tough act to follow.

This is one of the better "family films" that adults would still enjoy, and I don' mean to use that as a cliché. Suffice to say it's a fast-moving story, is creatively done and looks super on DVD. This was a stunner, visually-speaking.

The creativity - especially for a film 10 years old - involves the wonderful special-effects that make the famous wooden puppet so lifelike. I haven't seen it in eight or nine years but when this came out first on VHS I remember being shocked at the visuals and how real things looked.

This is not an animated film, and the story is a bit different from other versions. How faithful this is to the original story, I cannot tell you, because I never was a big fan of the story. I can tell you, however, that Martin Landau is very good playing Pinochhio's creator "Geppetto."

I found it interesting that the cricket in this story was called "Pepe," not Jiminy Cricket. At any rate, this is a nicely-done version of the famous kids' story.

The world famous fairy tale, "Pinocchio" is a story that is better suited for animation formats when it comes to film adaptations. This 1996 New Line Cinema version makes its first mistake by casting "Home Improvement" costar Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the title role and it makes more mistakes by not entirely sticking to the true storyline much of the time. However, Martin Landau makes a believable Gepetto and his performance prevents this film from being a complete waste of time.