PINOCCHIO

Stars: Tom Hanks, Joseph Gordon-Leavitt, Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, Lorraine Bracco, Keegan-Michael Key, Giuseppe Battiston, Jaquita Ta'le and Luke Evans.
Writers: Robert Zemeckis, Chris Weitz. Based on "The Adventures of Pinocchio" by Carlo Collodi.
Director: Robert Zemeckis.

Rating: ★ ½

Pinocchio now represents two significantly symbolic lines in the sand for the Walt Disney company. In 1940, the cartoon (produced by Walt, but directed by a team of animators each assigned key sequences) landed in cinemas an instant classic; along with Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs, Dumbo, Fantasia, Cinderella, it represents the might of the Mouse House at the height of their creative commitment to wondrous, heartfelt movie magic.

In 2022, Pinocchio is not any of those things. Superficially, it is the latest live-action/CGI hybrid that the Disney boardroom have deemed an intellectual property up for a reboot; a legacy title that may be nearing its expiry date after 80 years stoking the commercial coffers of the studio, and that the money-men have decided needed a new coat of paint.

And the result, in line with most creative undertakings borne out of greed, is horrible. Directed by Robert Zemeckis (and more on him later), Pinocchio is a shockingly soulless, cynically constructed slab of modern streaming content. It is a monumental testament to bad creative decision-making and corporate shilling; from the moment the cuckoo clocks on the wall of Geppeto’s workshop chime, and a parade of Disney characters emerge, this travesty ironically abandons any pretence it will take on anything resembling human form.

Zemeckis draws on old mate Tom Hanks to play Gepetto, the latest character in his 2022 tour of weird accents (see also Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis). The pair are working together for the umpteenth time, hoping to recapture that Forrest Gump vibe but more often recalling The Polar Express in everything they do. Why Hanks bothers going full ‘old Italian’ is hard to fathom, as Joseph Gordon-Leavitt as an annoying Jiminy Cricket is all Louisiana drawl; Pinocchio himself, voiced by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth, sounds like Bobby Brady. Other casting is either focus-group driven (Cynthia Erivo as The Blue Fairy…is fine, I guess) or totally in line with memos from the boardroom (“Hey, Beauty and the Beast’s Luke Evans is still on the books, so find something for him…”).

And on Zemeckis? By my reckoning (and I’ve been a fan since his script for Spielberg’s 1941 and his 1980 directorial debut, Used Cars), there is no sadder figure amongst the top-tier Hollywood directing ranks. Having helmed four legit classics (Back to the Future; Forrest Gump; Who Framed Roger Rabbit?; Contact) and one black-comedy cult favourite (Death Becomes Her) that found the perfect balance between new Hollywood tech and storytelling, he has chased that dragon over and over. His unwavering fascination with the potential of filmmaking technology has resulted in an ambitious but irredeemably flawed series of films that favour gadgetry over humanity (Beowulf; The Polar Express; A Christmas Carol; The Walk). 

Pinocchio is his worst yet; the story of the boy who wants to be real becomes a contradictory, even cautionary tale about how bringing life to the lifeless can go terribly wrong.

TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION

Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Jack Reynor, Nicola Peltz, Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, Titus Welliver, Sophia Myles, TJ Miller, Thomas Lennon and Bingbing Li.
Writer: Ehren Kruger.
Director: Michael Bay.

Rating: 0.5/5

No one expected director Michael Bay and the shareholders at Paramount Pictures to expand the art of cinema when they okayed a fourth Transformers film; we all get that these films only exist to drive quarterly earnings and fuel the ‘business’ of showbusiness. But nor was anyone envisioning just how insultingly low the creative team were willing to stoop to grind out their product. In ‘fast-food cinema’ terms, Transformers: Age of Extinction equates to one of those beef/bacon/cheese/beef monstrosities; those who dream it up know how horrible it is, but they also know everyone will want to try it for a couple of weeks.

The resurrection of Optimus Prime by good ol’ boy junk merchant Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg, going through the everyman-hero schtick with a couldn’t-care-less ambivalence) is at the heart…no, wrong word…centre of the narrative. After the destruction of Chicago in the last (and, up until now, worst) Transformers epic, Prime has hidden as a rust-bucket rig in an abandoned picture palace. This setting allows Bay and writer Ehren Kruger (who wrote two good movies over a decade ago – Arlington Road and The Ring – before descending into Hollywood hackdom) the films only flourish of ironic ‘wit’ – the crotchety old gent theatre owner (great character actor Richard Riehle, wasted here) complains that all they make sequels and remakes nowadays.

Yeager, with his dimwitted surfer dude stereotype offsider Lucas (TJ Miller) cracking wise by his side, get the truck back to the family homestead and begin the repair work to bring the Transformer hero back to life (Yeager is an amateur robotics expert, you see). But that is an illegal act, as all alien robots have been deemed enemies of the state, and soon black-suited, comically overstated ‘federal agents’ are tearing up the farm to find Prime.

The first act set-up is pure idiocy, with Yeager painted in very broad brush strokes as the square-jawed, blue-state archetype, every shot of him bathed in the dusk/dawn glow of sunlit heartland purity, a gently unfurling American flag always at the edge of frame. Yet Yeager is so relentlessly dimwitted and lacking in self- awareness, it becomes unclear as to whether the production is celebrating or mocking traditional American values.

However, the bewildering first act is Shakespearean compared to an extended mid-section which may represent the worst second act in scriptwriting history. Stanley Tucci, reprising his shrill paycheque performance from previous instalments, and Kelsey Grammar amp up the villainy as techno-entrepreneurs who have adapted the Transformer mechanics into new weaponry behind the government’s back (the current administration is stoopid, get it?) Wahlberg, his tarty-Barbie Doll daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz, Bay’s latest shameful fanboy fantasy take on womanhood) and her Irish (?) boyfriend, Shane (Jack Reynor) run and shoot and yell a lot, with no discernible impact on the plot for over an hour. From that point on, Transformers Age of Extinction is an unforgivably dull showreel of mindless carnage and mass destruction coupled with an extraordinary disregard for time, place, life, logic, physics…everything, in fact, but its own boorish, bombastic existence.

Other elements that grate include a new level of grotesque product placement (I know, the whole film is ‘toy brand product placement’, but…really, Bud Light?); the perpetuating of ‘Are we still doing this?’ stereotypes, mostly racial (all Asians know martial arts) and gender specific (the only women to make it in the corporate world are 20-something models in mini-skirts); and, blue-screen effects work that looks amateurish for a 2014 film budgeted at a stomach-turning US$165million.   

Bay has bludgeoned a throne for himself in the Hollywood upper echelon that has allowed for final cut on a series of insanely over-priced sequels. Above all other Hollywood by-products, these clunking mechanical behemoths need a committee of bureaucrats to keep egos like Bay’s in check. That his latest effort runs to 165 incoherent minutes is arrogant self-indulgence of the highest order and indicative of a hubris that will ultimately lead to an industry’s equally immense fall from grace.