The 1940 “Pinocchio” has always been one of my least favorite Disney movies. Maybe it was the fact that Pinocchio was just annoying, or maybe it was the part where all the kids turn into donkeys. Whatever it was, Disney’s new, live-action version wasn’t any better.

But before I start telling you about everything I didn’t like, let’s go over the positives. For starters, I liked the soundtrack. There weren’t nearly as many songs as I would’ve expected for a Disney movie, and the movie’s habit of having a full minute of rhyming couplets before some of the songs was rather off-putting, but overall, this was probably the best part of the movie.

The Pleasure Island scene, however, where the children are turning into donkeys, managed to be just as creepy as it was in the original. And the scene with Keegan-Michael Key as Honest John, along with Luke Evans’ song as Coachman, was genuinely good.

The rest, though… Well, there wasn’t really anything I absolutely hated, but there were enough agitating things to make watching the movie a chore.
Though the movie was presumably set in a small town in Italy, the accents were all over the place. Tom Hanks as Geppetto had a vaguely folksy accent, but nothing you could mistake for Italian. Meanwhile, Angus Wright as Signore Rizzi did sound Italian, and Jamie Demetriou as the schoolmaster almost sounded German.

And Pinocchio. I don’t know what to say about his voice. Honestly, Benjamin Evans Ainsworth sounded just like Pinocchio should. But he just sounded so annoying that I’m glad he didn’t have too many lines.

That’s not all, of course. I mean, the whale that ate Pinocchio and Geppetto wasn’t even a whale! It had tentacles. And I don’t know why the easiest way to turn a whale into a sea monster was to add tentacles, but that’s what they decided to do.
Oh, and remember that scene in “Incredibles” where Dash basically turns into a motorboat propeller? Pinocchio does that too. With only half a boat to push. And I don’t even want to talk about when he waterskis.

But the worst part was when he saves his father’s life. At the end of the movie, everyone’s expecting Pinocchio to turn into a real boy, and NOTHING HAPPENS. It’s an anticlimactic end to an already disappointing movie.

Honestly, I can’t in good conscience recommend this movie to anyone. I don’t hate it, but those few moments where I could see that it could have been good just make it worse when it ultimately isn’t. But if you’re really craving a Pinocchio adaptation this year, wait for Guillermo del Toro’s version to come out in December. I have much higher hopes for that one.