Pinocchio's Christmas

Pinocchio's Christmas (1980)

*** (out of 4)

Another winning Rankin/Bass animated film has Pinocchio selling a book that Geppetto bought for him so that he can take the money and buy his father a Christmas gift. Along the way he's cheated out of the money by Fox and Cat and soon Pinocchio finds himself in an all new adventure. I really wasn't aware of this film before running into it on television and I must say that this was one of the better Christmas animations that I've seen. I'm a little surprised that the film isn't better known and just looking around it appears that most people haven't heard of the film, which is a shame. As usual, the animation is a major plus as all of the characters look terrific and I really love how much detail they actually put into Pinocchio. The amount of detail they give the character almost looks so good that you forget that it's not some sort of computer generated effect. Another major plus is the actual story that manages to contain some laughs, drama and of course a message for the kids. I enjoyed several of the flashbacks including a wonderful sequence where we see Geppetto getting the wood and carving what would become Pinocchio. With the commercials this here runs an hour but the added running time certainly pays off and the material is so rich that you really could have turned this into a feature-length film and it still would have been entertaining.