Del Toro's dark vision strings 'Pinocchio' along with enchanting fantasy, haunting intelligence

“Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio” - ★ ★ ★ ★

If you missed “Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio” during its highly limited theatrical release, you can experience this hauntingly dark, lushly visual stop-motion animated fantasy starting Friday, Dec. 9, on Netflix.

Just as Steven Spielberg remastered the 1961 musical classic “West Side Story” last year, del Toro puts his own earnestly creepy personal stamp on Carlo Collodi's 19th-century story “The Adventures of Pinocchio.”

And you can tell from trailers and commercials that this is not, not, not the cute and lovable 1940 animated classic musical from Walt Disney.

(Mercifully, it is also not the critically napalmed Disney+ production directed by Robert Zemeckis from earlier this year.)

“Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio” comes steeped in death, grief and Christian symbols, and it resets Collodi's story to the time of Mussolini's rise to power in Italy.

This “Pinocchio” - directed by del Toro and “Fantastic Mr. Fox” stop-motion artist Mark Gustafson - stretches far beyond a magically animated puppet who yearns to be a human son. It addresses the imperfections of two fathers and the raw, self-centeredness of youth in ways the Disney production carefully avoided.

Del Toro's Pinocchio becomes the physical manifestation of grief expressed by woodcarver Geppetto (voiced by David Bradley) whose own son Carlo dies during a World War I bombing of the church where Geppetto has worked on a never-completed crucifix.

Little Pinocchio (an engagingly youthful Gregory Mann, who also supplies the voice of Carlo) looks like a stark, rustic shop class project made with sticks and spindly joints. His nose extends when he tells a lie, and it looks as if a maple tree is growing out of his face.

Little wonder the local community rejects the poor kid, thinking him to be an evil or possessed outsider.

But the local podesta (a high judicial and military leader voiced by Ron Perlman) thinks Pinocchio might be a perfect soldier in the Italian army alongside his own hesitant son Candlewick (Finn Wolfhard).

For a time, Pinocchio becomes a virtual indentured servant to a corrupt, capitalistic circus manager named Count Volpe (a sneaky, snakey Christoph Waltz), whose mistreated monkey (a wily Cate Blanchett) takes pity on the dancing, singing stick figure.

Pinocchio's challenging adventures occasionally whisk him into a nightmarish purgatory lorded over by a blue Death entity that keeps tabs on how many “lives” the puppet has used up. (Tilda Swinton supplies her slithery voice, as well as the warmer delivery of her sibling, the Wood Sprite.)

Ewan McGregor puts pep into the voice of the aristocratic Sebastian J. Cricket, but the dramatic impact pales in comparison to Cliff Edwards' stellar rendition of Disney's conscientious insect counterpart Jiminy Cricket.

“Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio” doesn't dumb down the drama or the dialogue, but boldly poses more questions than supplies answers, and prefers to challenge younger viewers rather than indulge them with cartoon simplicities.

The rise of fascism and the vacillating timing for acts of responsible rebellion and resistance are heady topics that will likely go over younger heads.

If anything, del Toro loves his material perhaps a bit more than we might, as his movie succumbs to a problem afflicting many current motion pictures that offer epic running times without commensurate epic subject matter.

Is “Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio” scarier than Disney's beloved classic?

Yes. And no.

The 1940 scene in which a giant whale swallows Geppetto, Jiminy and their entire boat (in fantastic hand-drawn animation) seems rather tame compared to del Toro's gigantic, stop-motion sea monster.

On the other cinematic hand, when I saw “Pinocchio” as a child, seeing the shadow of a terrified boy morphing into a donkey gave me nightmares for a week.

Starring: Voices of Ewan McGregor, David Bradley, Gregory Mann, Ron Perlman, Finn Wolfhard, Cate Blanchett, Christoph Waltz, Tilda Swinton

Directed by: Guillermo del Toro, Mark Gustafson

Other: A Netflix release in theaters and on streaming Friday, Dec. 9. Rated PG. 117 minutes