Puzzle Movie Roundup: Pinocchio/Christopher Robin
The Puzzle Movie Roundup will be a periodic update on movies that are watched while my wife is working on a jigsaw puzzle. There are two types of puzzle movies: either one of my personal favorites (Goodfellas, Mad Max: Fury Road, etc.) that I force upon her while she is puzzling or something from Disney+. Even if her back is turned to the screen she can still follow along with the movie. It’s impressive.
It’s a weird sensation watching any iconic movie from 70+ years ago. It’s almost like watching the movie in reverse. You’re familiar with all the iconic things — from other movies, from TV, from commercials, from anything in pop culture — but you remember those things from the parodies rather than the original text. I hadn’t seen Pinocchio in 20–25 years, so my most recent exposure to the character is from Geico ads. Then you hear the songs or a bit of dialogue and you think “oh THIS is what this is from?” “Let your conscience be your guide” and wishing upon a star has seeped into our lexicon to the point that we just say those things and don’t remember the source. It’s surreal watching Pinocchio in that respect.
I didn’t really remember the plot, just snippets that scarred me as a child. Because, let’s be real, Pinocchio is disturbing. And horny! So horny. Jiminy Cricket is the horniest Disney character I can remember. Jiminy at different points in the movie wants to fuck wooden clock figurines, female marionettes, a porcelain doll, and the magical Blue Fairy. It’s a clever joke turning an animal that is constantly informing us of its desire to mate into a horndog that things it can bone down with an angel.
Jiminy Cricket’s abject horniness is easy to swallow because the rest of the movie is as unsettling as you might remember. The movie kicks into gear after the Blue Fairy animates Pinocchio into a wooden boy, half-fulfilling Geppetto’s wish that Pinocchio would become a real boy. In order to become a real boy, she tells Pinocchio that he has to be good and truthful and shit like that. On his way to his first day of school he’s abducted by an adult fox and cat (?) and sold into child slavery to perform in Stromboli’s traveling puppet show. Yes, Pinocchio is locked in a cage. Yes, Pinocchio is about child trafficking.
With an assist from the Blue Fairy, Pinocchio escapes Stromboli and ends up being sold back into child slavery by the fox and cat to the Coachman. The Coachman is collecting boys and unleashing them upon Pleasure Island, where they can gamble, drink, smoke cigars, and destroy shit. The Coachman’s plan is that boys, left to their own devices, will turn into jackasses and thus allow him to sell the donkeys. He meant the jackass thing literally.
I didn’t remember much about this movie, but I remembered that because it supremely fucked up Little Andrew. And it’s *still* effective and scary in its use of Cronenberg-ian body horror.
Pinocchio, and I can’t believe these are words I’m about to type, is about the horrors of puberty. The boys in general but Pinocchio specifically lose their innocence and face a life of enslavement after bodily changes. Pinocchio is rescued from this fate because he fleas the things that represent adulthood: smoking, drinking, cursing, destruction. He escapes Pleasure Island and begins a quest to find his father, to regain the life of innocence that is represented in the traditional father/son roles that Geppetto and Pinocchio would serve.
The most famous thing about Pinocchio is that his nose grows when he lies. In other words, when one of Pinocchio’s appendages grows, it’s bad.
Eventually Pinocchio and Geppetto are reunited. Pinocchio rescues Geppetto from the belly of Monstro, a whale that swims on top of water (Disney would rectify their marine biology gaffes 63 years later with Finding Nemo, at least). Monstro chasing Pinocchio and Geppetto is still thrilling, and I found that after the sequence my mouth had been hanging open. My wife paused her puzzling to watch and commented how tense it was.
This is why these classic Disney movies are revered and referenced 80 years later. They’re the right mixture of thrills, warmth, and scares (scares most of all) and the animation is still gorgeous. Even if the themes are often puritanical, it’s hard to not get swept away for 90 minutes. It also helps that Pinocchio isn’t blatantly racist.
Oh, yeah. Because of his bravery Pinocchio becomes a real boy. And honestly it might be the most upsetting image of the movie.
Yikes. His left hand looks enormous.
Christopher Robin was a success because it didn’t make me cry. Or even want to cry, like every recent Pixar movie. I dreaded watching it since I first saw the trailer two years ago. I grew up watching Winnie the Pooh cartoons and Jim Cummings was back to voice Pooh. I feared a nostalgia rush would overtake me.
That didn’t happen, and for that I’m thankful. These are tough times now and I didn’t want to deal with that. The movie itself is…fine. If not for the excellent Paddington movies of recent years it might have been better, but now whenever there’s a cute bear walking around London it’s hard to not compare the two. Christopher Robin doesn’t shy away from the comparison, either; in one scene, Pooh steps in honey and makes honey footprints all over the floor, reminiscent of Paddington making a mess with his beloved orange marmalade.
You watch Christopher Robin to look at the stuffed animals and see what antics they get into. The quality of the movie is almost besides the point.
Tigger is still obnoxious, though.
