First animated shot: Jimminy Cricket singing to himself, revealing he was the voice over the opening titles.

This is immediately more narratively satisfying than Snow White. The story has flow. You know Happy is happy because that’s his name, you know Geppetto is lonely because he talks to his music box like it’s a roommate.

If Snow White was the studio showing the height of their technical skill, Pinocchio is about pushing beyond those limits. Cuts with everything in screen moving with its own weight and momentum, the water and reflections and other effects, incredible.

But the cost of experimentation is the loss of consistency. Honest John and Gideon look and move like they’re from a totally different school of animation from Pinocchio and Geppetto. The Pleasure Island sequence looks like a Fleischer Studios product. Compositing stop-motion in for Stromboli’s caravan is interesting but looks so out of place.

Monstro has his own visual texture unlike anything else, but that’s earned. He’s a sea monster, he shouldn’t follow the rules. Monstro’s great.

This is Geppetto’s movie, and the middle episodes are weaker for lacking him. His performance immediately sells his kindness and loneliness. Of course he’d travel the earth to find his puppet that didn’t come home from his first day of school. I’m not planning to see the new Zemeckis movie but it’s clear what would draw him to this character.