Retro Views: Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night

   Pinocchio and the Emperor of the Night is a film title that I've seen pop up in various places recently. I have an incredibly vague memory of seeing this on TV one night when I was five or six. It didn't leave much of an impression on me, I just remember finding it a bit odd. Since I wasn't quite sure what I had seen, I decided to give it a watch last week.

   First, let me start out by saying that Disney's Pinocchio is one of my favorite Disney movies, so of course this movie is going to disappoint me. Let me also state that this movie is from 1987, back when almost all sequels were just a rehash of the first film. Yet for all of its flaws, which are numerous, I found myself rather enjoying it. The voice cast is mostly great, especially James Earl Jones as the Emperor of The Night. Ricki Lee Jones voice work unfortunately makes the Blue Fairy sound like she's on Valium. Don Knotts lends his voice to Gee Willikers, a gosh awful replacement for Jimminy Cricket. One of my biggest problems with this film is that Pinocchio makes all the mistakes he was supposed to have learned from in the first story! Did being turned into a real boy give him moral amnesia or something? Every time he did something bad, I just wanted to smack him upside his little wooden head and yell Did you learn nothing? The evil carnival is pretty much the puppet show, an the Neon Cabaret is basically Pleasure Island. 

   So why do I kind of like this movie? I really don't know. Maybe it was the dark tone, which they did a good job with. The scene where Pinocchio is transformed back into an inanimate puppet is really intense, and has been known to traumatize kids who have grown up with the film (clip of this scene at the end of the review). Is it wrong that I love the music coming out of the organ grinder in this scene? The Neon Cabaret is also kind of cool, even if it does simply rehash the first film.

   If you like the original Pinocchio, then you might want to give Pinocchio and The Emperor of the Night a chance. Just remember that this is one of those films that is so bad that its good. And that synthesized music will never get out of your head.

I apologize in advance for any nightmares this may induce.

The Muppets Get an Encore

     Lets face it, the muppets haven't been very good over the past decade. There was a really bad feature film and several less than stellar TV specials. But I remember a time when Jim Henson's beloved creations could do no wrong. I grew up not just on Sesame Street, but also on The Dark Crystal, and The Jim Henson Hour. I had been rather irritated with the how badly Disney had mishandled the muppets since acquiring them. Luckily for us, Disney has righted it's wrong in an amazing way with The Muppets.

    The film goes back to the muppet gang's cinematic roots, most notably The Muppet Movie (1979). They even give us a rather well written new muppet named Walter. The story is heartfelt and humorous, which is exactly what a muppet film should be. Kermit is actually rather depressed in the beginning, and getting the old gang back together is a bit trickier than you'd expect. They squeeze in practically every muppet that ever existed (although I don't think Rizzo was in it.) This does tend to be a problem, but not much of one. While the presence of Jason Segal and Amy Adams doesn't ad much to the film, they aren't the main focus and do a great job with underwritten characters. The new songs by Bret McKenzie are fun and memorable. Life's a Happy Song is a shoe in for an Oscar. My only nitpicks are that the actor playing the voice of Fozzie was a tiny bit off in places, and some of the leg work on Miss Piggy was awkward (there is a scene where you see her walking away from Kermit, and the leg movement is just weird looking. No one moves like that.)

   The Muppets is the revitalization that fans have been waiting for. It was hard not to smile most of the way through the film. Jason Segal's script is a love letter to our felt covered friends, and I think Jim Henson would be proud. The camaraderie and optimism that the muppets have come to represent is at the heart of this film, and that is why it works, while at the same time reminding us of the simple truth that "Life's a happy song when there's someone by your side to sing along".