Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio is surprisingly both a very faithful rendition of the original story and a very Del Toro movie.

It has a lot of Del Toro’s elements (older spirits meddling with human life, a found family, a refusal to glorify war and fascism as a background) but, if you did not know that it was a Del Toro movie, you would accept all of those elements as coming from the original material. It feels like he has found an existing story that meshes very well with his personality and interests.

In a movie like Fantastic Mr. Fox, the stop motion fells like an artistic decision. Something that shapes the viewer’s experience and enriches it with texture. Here, the animation could have been fully 3D rendered and feel pretty much identical. Stop motion feels more like a directorial preference: the personality of the movie comes from its designs (character designs but also the way every small object is crafted and the music, always somewhere in the background and meaningful¹).

While the movie is suitable for children, it depicts emotions finely and does not shy away from deeper themes like grief and the difficulties of raising a child. Overall, I would recommend it to everyone and look forward to being able to watch it one day with my children.