‘Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio’ Debuts to Glowing Reviews: Director’s ‘Best Movie in a Decade’

thewrap.com:

disastrously received rendition) as a “family movie” that “does not shy away from dark themes of death and war,” per Insider.

Its critic Ayomikun Adekaiyero wrote that the adaptation “justifies its existence by modernizing the tale with beautiful stop-motion animation and a tear-jerking story.” On the flip side, Adekaiyero was “disappointed by the mediocrity of the musical elements of the movie,” adding that they were “secondary to the story.”Wendy Ide of Screen Daily lauded the film’s “enthralling emotional journey,” predicting that “it should connect with both existing fans of del Toro’s distinctive vision, and older family audiences.”Polygon’s Oli Welsh echoed this sentiment by noting that del Toro brought the “story to the mid-20th century,” by expanding on the classic take “to take in many of his own key motifs, especially from the horrific fairy tales ‘The Devil’s Backbone’ and ‘Pan’s Labyrinth'; Europe between the wars, the specter of Fascism, the terror of childhood, the land of the dead, and the meeting point of the monstrous, the human, and the sublime.” He goes on to praise the film as “technically and artistically, one of the great works of stop motion.”Slashfilm‘s Hannah Shaw-Williams similarly praised “Pinocchio” for straying from the “ubiquitous Disney formula” by refusing “to talk down to children or draw a sunny curtain over the terrors of the world.” She also gave a shoutout to the film’s “real shining star” Gregory Mann, who voices the titular character “with a rambunctiousness and enthusiasm that’s enormously endearing and infectious.”TheWrap’s Nicholas Barber called it a “soulful stop-motion masterpiece,” “a dark but sweet horror fantasy about death, grief, and a misunderstood monster being.