It’s Pinocchio season! With a new adaptation of the classic tale burning up awards and another… not, we decided to cover the baffling and much maligned Roberto Benigni Pinocchio from 2002!
Geppetto (Carlo Giuffré) is a sad old man who makes a son out of wood. That boy comes to life as a middle aged Italian man (Benigni) and immediately gets into lots of hijinks. He’s unruly, hyperactive, doesn’t want to go to school, and loves candy. He leaves for weeks at a time to go on adventures where he’s swindled, imprisoned, caught in a bear trap, or turned into a donkey. But the Blue Fairy (Nicoletta Braschi) teaches him how to be less horrible and he becomes a real boy/full grown man.
What makes this even more baffling is the atrociously mismatched English dub, featuring Breckin Meyer, Glenn Close, Eric Idle, John Cleese, Kevin James, Eddie Griffin, Cheech Marin, Topher Grace, Queen Latifah, Regis Philbin, and Jim Belushi.
A Dario Argento Pinocchio movie would have been awesome.
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