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A piece of pine-wood is carved into a puppet by a poor old toy maker. The puppet suddenly comes to life for feeling exciting adventures along with a female wood cricket.

Lacks some charm, but improves eventually

This is a German made TV mini series filmed in Turkey about an Italian toy maker and badly dubbed in English. I think ,most us know the story. This one includes the whale ending, the mules, and Coco the wood cricket. It was geared for a very young audience, maybe about 5 years old. It doesn&#39;t have much in the way of adult appeal. If you have seen the old Disney version, or not, watch it again instead. Not watchable for adults.

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Pinocchio

The version itself is entertaining, but obviously pales in comparison to the book or the versions by Disney and Luigi Comencini, which have set a high bar. The time is wasted a lot on minor scenes and even feels plodding. The new additions were okay characters. Coco is mildly annoying with her remarks. The acting is good. Mario Adorf looks sympathetic and the other characters do a fine job. The problem is that this version is bland and uninteresting. It is entertaining, but not awesome.

Okay here we have &quot;Pinocchio&quot;, a German mini-series from 2013 or well lets say a two-part movie this is really which has its 5th anniversary these days as back in 2013 this was shown during the holidays as well. Writer and director of these slightly under 3 hours is Anna Justice and it is one of her more known works for sure. I will not go much into detail about the story now. Chances are that if you consider seeing this or reding my review, then you know who/what Pinocchio is and the basic stuff about his nose for example, about the guy ho creates him etc. The latter is played by Mario Adorf in one of his more recent performances and certainly also in one of his latter career performances as he is approaching 90 now. Shows you how long he&#39;s been around. Anyway, he is certainly the best thing about the film, an absolute scene stealer and I wish he could have had more screen time. But I take what I can get. after all, the film is named Pinocchio and not Geppetto, which are basically the only Italian references (aside from Adorf flawlessly speaking the Italian language). Now, in my opinion this 2-parter was not off to a good start at all. The first 1.5 hours are considerably weaker than the second in my opinion. Maybe it has to do that the first is really all about the Pinocchio presentation and the second offers more depth, better characters and a more interesting fantasy story. Also the introduction was really weak and rushed, the way Pinocchio sits there all of a sudden, no process of making him nothing, even if he is still a doll at that point. It becomes a mediocre kids film there and I was extremely underwhelmed to be honest. By the way the cast is pretty good, not too surprising if we take a look at German kids films these days. Mentioned Adorf already, perfect casting for Geppetto really, shame everything around himw as so weak initially, and then there&#39;s also Engelke (voice only), Lukas, Hüller, Sadler and others that you will probably recognize as a German film buff. So yeah now about the second half: I already said there were more interesting characters, like two of the actors I already mentioned and the story gets far better too with the fake Wonderland parts and the Jonas whale reference towards the end where it is Pinocchio&#39;s nose that gets him and his creator out of trouble. How likely is it by the way they both end up inside the same whale. Oh well. Never mind, not a problem. But Pinocchio finally lying for the right reasons was a good inclusion and also the execution was fitting and made it fun to watch. Which is not always something one can say. Pinocchio looks nice on the poster here for sure, but the animation was not always something you&#39;d expect in the year 2013. The wood pattern on his head alone won&#39;t cut the cake sadly. Same about the Engelke ant living inside him. It was not soo bad you couldn&#39;t watch, but yeah, certainly room for improvement there visually, same for the whale scenes when we are outside in the sea. But the ending was good again when he becomes a boy. Yeah well, the brilliant original ideas linked to Pinocchio are certainly helping the film here that it is not an original script, but mos of the time the execution of these is tolerable, not formidable. Also think eventually it was a good idea to fit this film into two, one two-hour movie à la Jim Knopf could have worked too, but this way here it is fine the way it is. Certainly could have done without some üparts in the first half especially ot the Sadler/Friedrich love story line, which was luckily not too frequent to be seen on the screen and also kept very basic no kissing or so as this film is really almost exclusively for children. Still I as a grown-up had a fun time here too watching the longer it went. It&#39;s a close call between positive and negative recommendation for me honestly and I will let you decide on that. But the film deserves a chance and it is a bit of a pity it is so hard to find and het a hand on these days as it really isn&#39;t a bad outcome and breathes some solid modern life into an old classic.

User reviews

Pinocchio

You have a lot of wood

Decent if uninteresting

Lacks some charm, but improves eventually

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