Pinocchio...my bestest Disney movie

Pinocchio has the words "classic" written all over it and helps back up the fact that Walt Disney Pictures has always been the number one provider in lavish storybook animated entertainment. Like many Disney films, it's based on a classic piece of literature, this time it being Collodi's fairy tale cum satire, which just happens to be called Pinocchio, too. It has a magical effect that is involving and powerful at the same time, jumping from one genre to another on each of Pinocchio's misadventures. I really like this movie.

The film opens with the classic and powerful ballad When you wish upon a star , which sums up not just the plot of the film, but also the whole point of Walt Disney Pictures itself. We discover that the person who is singing the song is actually Jiminy Cricket, a little insect in a suit. He tells us of how he came to learn that when you wish upon a star. And it just happens to be what happens in the film.

The typical Disney storybook that opens by itself appears and we cut across to 19th century Italy (where nobody speaks Italian what so ever). Over the Dolomite mountains, we zoom into Gepetto's workshop who has just finished making his puppet, Pinocchio. Jiminy Cricket, who is bunking in the toy shop hears him wishing that Pinocchio could be a real boy. The Blue Fairy flies in and grants Gepetto's wish. Well, kind of. Pinocchio is living, but he's not quite human. No, he must learn how to act like a real human before he can become one. Of course, it's up to Jiminy to help him along the way. Yet things don't go to plan, especially when there's temptation.

Temptation is something which plays a major key in making Pinocchio work; by showing how naive Pinocchio is in falling for temptation, it makes the viewer sympathise for him and feel sorry for him when he gets into some sort of trouble. The theme of temptation in Pinocchio is represented by a number of very interesting villains. There's Honest John and Gideon the cat, who are very charming, yet equally odd. Stromboli is named after a volcano in Italy and is a fat, greedy and egotistic puppet master with a volcano's temper.

There's another villain in Pinocchio who is worth noting. This villain is the Coachman. He seems a plumper, older version of the Child catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. He is also the most interesting of all the Disney villains, much more than Cruella De Vil or the Evil Stepmother. In the first scene where we see him, he seems sligtly dodgy and then by the end of the scene, he has been quickly developed as the stuff of nightmares. His acts are equally nightmaric stuff. Letting little boys become donkeys is as disturbing as some of the stuff you'll see in a Hitchcock thriller and are possibly the most frightening and darkest scenes you'll ever see in a Disney movie.

The sheer detail of Pinocchio is amazing, too. All the main characters look as though they are real people as their attention to detail is unlimited. To think that the whole film was hand drawn, hand painted and shot on a tricky multiplane camera is amazing. The color used on the characters look like watercolor, even though it is not, blending the characters nicely together with the watercolor backgrounds.

I'm not even going to mention the ending. The thing is so powerful, it blows you away and can't be spoiled. Pinocchio does not only stand as possibly the greatest animated film of all time, it stands as one of the best films ever made.