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.
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