Luke McWilliams gives his review of the 2022 animated film, Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio.

In a small Italian village in the 1930s between the two World Wars, local woodcarver Geppetto (David Bradley) grieves for his young son Carlo (Gregory Mann) who was lost in a bombing raid. In a drunken stupor, Geppetto passionately carves a young boy in Carlo’s image from wood, which is soon visited by an angel (Tilda Swinton).

Director del Toro made the movie in stop-motion based on the darker designs of Gris Grimly’s 2002 edition of Pinocchio. Like del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, the threat of World War II casts a large shadow over the villagers who, before the rise of Mussolini, are forced to act like obedient puppets lest they upset the apple cart.

The rambunctious, exuberant, and excitable Pinocchio is the antithesis of Geppetto’s lost boy Carlo and is quick to draw the attention of the local Priest who questions his holy design, the local government official (Ron Pearlman) who wishes him to be an immortal soldier, and puppet master Count Volpe (Christoph Waltz) who wants to exploit Pinocchio for the good of his travelling circus.

Like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Pinocchio is left to his own devices to find out what it takes to be human so that he may heartbreakingly attempt to gain the love of his father. For his sins, Geppetto, too, is to learn to accept that his Carlo is gone, and that Pinocchio is his own person.

Verdict: A distinctive take on the story of Pinocchio from del Toro’s own childhood experiences. 3 stars.

• Luke McWilliams, themovieclub.net.