Very disappointed :(

ridiculous rating

The first must-see film of the year.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Had this version of Pinnochio been made by a major Hollywood studio we would have had adverts on TV, all the major cinemas would have run it for weeks and we would never have heard the end of it. I saw this premiered at the Edinburgh Festival where the running time was listed as 180 minutes (so far as I can recall) and I thought we were half way through when in fact there were just 15 minutes to go. After the premier, it vanished from sight and I never heard nor saw any sign of it again. What a terrible waste. The film deserves better. My only disappointment was when the puppet turned into a chubby little boy but, after the excellent blending of animation with live action, this was a minor niggle. I found the film entertaining on several levels and strongly recommend it to film clubs and people with large screens - I suspect this is a film that does not work nearly so well on an average television set - a full-sized cinema or large Home Cinema system with surround sound is what it needs to do it justice.

This is one of the better "family films" that adults would still enjoy, and I don' mean to use that as a cliché. Suffice to say it's a fast-moving story, is creatively done and looks super on DVD. This was a stunner, visually-speaking.The creativity - especially for a film 10 years old - involves the wonderful special-effects that make the famous wooden puppet so lifelike. I haven't seen it in eight or nine years but when this came out first on VHS I remember being shocked at the visuals and how real things looked. This is not an animated film, and the story is a bit different from other versions. How faithful this is to the original story, I cannot tell you, because I never was a big fan of the story. I can tell you, however, that Martin Landau is very good playing Pinochhio's creator "Geppetto." I found it interesting that the cricket in this story was called "Pepe," not Jiminy Cricket. At any rate, this is a nicely-done version of the famous kids' story.

This is a lavish, sumptuously-mounted version of the classic story. Great costumes and location work, with Prague as 18th-century Italy. Top-notch FX: Pinocchio himself; Pepe (not Jiminy) Cricket; a hUge, whale-like sea monster; boys morphing into jackasses.Good cast: Martin Landau (fresh from his Oscar-winning portrayal of Lugosi in "Ed Wood") as Gepetto; Genevieve Bujold, whom I hadn't seen in ages (and who is aging very nicely), as his long-term love interest; Udo Kier as the heavy; plus an assortment of other character actors mostly unknown to me.Altogether well-done, its only drawbacks being a couple of lame songs, plus occasional slapstick for the kiddies. And it must be admitted, the Diz cartoon is a tough act to follow.

The world famous fairy tale, "Pinocchio" is a story that is better suited for animation formats when it comes to film adaptations. This 1996 New Line Cinema version makes its first mistake by casting "Home Improvement" costar Jonathan Taylor Thomas in the title role and it makes more mistakes by not entirely sticking to the true storyline much of the time. However, Martin Landau makes a believable Gepetto and his performance prevents this film from being a complete waste of time.