Pinocchio Review: 4 Ups & 6 Downs

The latest of Disney's seemingly never-ending slew of live-action remakes of their beloved animated movies is out now on Disney+ - Robert Zemeckis' take on Pinocchio.

Between the many varied Pinocchio adaptations we've seen in recent years - not to forget Guillermo del Toro's upcoming stop-motion animated version for Netflix - it wasn't easy to get excited for Zemeckis' remake, especially given the filmmaker's spotty track record in recent years.

And so, it's not at all surprising that this glossy, straight-to-streaming new movie is another aggressively mediocre, even unnecessary attempt to update a classic animation that really didn't need updating at all.

Disney tellingly embargoed reviews until release day, and at the time of press critics are predictably skewing firmly negative on it, citing the lack of magic and ingenuity in a rather forgettable remake nobody was really asking for.

Is it terrible? Certainly not, but it feels more like a cynical commercial calculation by a company keen to create Content for its streaming service than because anyone actually had an interesting vision for delivering a new Pinocchio movie.

And with that in mind, here's where it went wrong...