PinonononoNO!

 Just as Autumn was beginning, sitting in a festoon-lit beer garden on the South Bank, I got to thinking about Pinocchio, and about how much of my adulthood seemed to have been devoted to exactly the life choices he'd been told to avoid. To showbiz and hokum. I didn't know the original book very well though, so I then decided to text Gemma Brockis, who'd once made a touring adaptation with Silvia Mercuriali in a car, and ask her what she thought Pinocchio was originally, actually about?

 Gemma answered that originally, actually the story had ended with Pinocchio getting hanged. Carlo Collodi only added the blue fairy and whale-based redemption arc after the success of his initial serial prompted its expansion into a whole book. She also said it was all tied into the Risorgimento. What was that? The unification of Italy. Collodi was apparently deeply concerned with the path his new country would take, and was convinced that education was the key to its prosperity. So, wait, was Pinocchio Italy? Totally, Gemma answered. I dimly remembered a live action television adaptation from my childhood, and decided when I got home to see if it was online. It was. Here's a taste.

 

 Nightmarish. As most live action adaptations of Pinocchio seem to be. That fox at the top of this post is in it too. Want the whole thing? Both episodes? 

 Here!

 

  "What a horrible thing, Simon, why would you share this?" 

 Well, I don''t know, look, sorry, but last night I saw Netflix's new "Pinocchio" – a film Guillermo Del Toro apparently says he has wanted to make for "as long as he can remember" –  and I think that might be even worse. At least the old BBC adaptation is nightmarishly bad. Despite its many nods to Frankenstein and the inclusion of Mussolini, the Del Toro version isn't even that. One of the problems might be that Del Toro said he "wanted to deviate from the original book’s themes of obeying authority by making his Pinocchio virtuous for questioning the rules and forging his own set of morals." But he doesn't, and when Pinocchio finds Gepetto in the stomach of a whale, it's not because he spent the last act of the story searching for him, but because he inexplicably and fortuitously was sent flying out of a fascist military academy by a dropped bomb, which maybe makes the film sound more fun than it is. I promise it's not fun.

 

 I'd also suggest that if you don't like the story of Pinocchio – whatever that is – don't adapt it. I don't care that Mark Kermode gave this film five stars. Well, that's a lie, obviously I care. If anything I care more about this film's reception than the film itself. It actually made me want to watch the Zemeckis version to see how that could possibly be worse, although as summarised by the excellent Ryan George below, that also seems to share quite a few of the Netflix version's narrative malfunctions. Don't watch the Del Toro adaptation, is really all I've come on here to say, quite spitefully, I don't know, you might love it. But if you really want to watch a terrible Pinocchio adaptation this holiday, dim the lights, press "play" above, and let the screaming start.