Pinocchio

Video Brinquedo have been branded The Asylum of animation for good reason. Their output is consistently awful, with the exact same flaws in everything they've done so far with no improvement whatsoever. However, there was some slight hope seeing as Carlo Collodi's story of 'Pinocchio' is a classic story, very easy to get into and be kept there and its messaging still having relevance today.

Any glimmer of hope, finally seeing their 'Pinocchio' out of curiosity, quickly vanished during and after watching Video Brinquedo's version, while they have actually done far worse (i.e. 'Ratatoing', 'The Little Panda Fighter', 'The Little Cars' films, 'Little and Big Monsters' and 'What's Up: Balloon to the Rescue') by far the worst adaptation of the story (at least Roberto Benigni's film, as mediocre as it is, didn't completely disrespect it). If being asked why keep watching, the answer is simple. There is something somewhat compulsive about their badness, but it compels anybody to see what else they've done and compare, also to see if they've made anything worthwhile. The answer is that none of them are, and while some are worse and more intelligence insulting than others the amateurish (and that's being kind) quality is consistent.

For starters, the animation is hideous to look at and looks like it was made in a few minutes if that. Again it is filled with forced character designs, incredibly flat colours(even badly coloured crayon pictures have more refinement) and backgrounds that are lacking in any kind of fluidity coming across as static and simplistic instead.

Writing once again is appalling, and doesn't even have unintentional humour value, with clunky and draggy exposition and the irrelevant chatter and the more senselessly nonsensical parts give a real excessive long-winded quality. Adults will find it too juvenile and even kids will feel like it went well overboard trying to dumb down to them. Again a big problem when so dialogue-heavy.

'Pinocchio' courtesy of Video Brinquedo has to be the dullest and least magical or exciting adaptation there is of the story. It takes forever to get going, and despite how all this sounds this is coming from a patient person with a very varied film taste and never watches anything with a stereotype of what a film should do but instead judging it on what it set out to do. Pinocchio's adventures have no charm, fun or atmosphere and feel very rambling instead.

A relative lack of likability for the character (or any of the characters for that matter) doesn't help, Pinocchio should go on a character journey and learn a lot, one doesn't get much of that sense there. The characters on top of being hideously animated are both bland and irritating, a few unintentionally creepy. The voice acting is lifeless or unbearably obnoxious, like they didn't even try or even want to be there, it was almost like they were bribed or would do anything to get some quick cash.

For all those faults, there is one redeeming quality. That is the music, which makes the inspired decision to include classical pieces of music like "Nimrod", "Va Pansiero" and "Waltz of the Flowers", all beautiful pieces of music in their own right. Even that is wasted though by the random and coming out of nowhere way they are placed.

All in all, typically terrible. 1/10 Bethany Cox