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    Tom Hanks and Robin Wright on ‘Forrest Gump,’ ‘Here’ and De-aging

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    It’s not exactly a “Forrest Gump” sequel, but the new movie “Here” does reunite the stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, and the filmmakers — the director Robert Zemeckis, screenwriter Eric Roth, composer Alan Silvestri — of that 1994 Oscar-winning favorite. Like the earlier film, the new one also travels across decades, with an unheard-of perspective.In this case, though, the viewpoint is the camera’s: “Here” is filmed almost entirely from one locked-off shot, with a camera positioned in what becomes the living room of a century-old New England home. There are no cutaways or traditional close-ups; no montages or wide-angle transitions. It’s an experiment in cinematic formalism, inspired by Richard McGuire’s ambitious, genre-expanding 2014 graphic novel of the same name.Though the story starts with the dinosaurs and travels all the way through the present day with different characters, it focuses mostly on Hanks and Wright’s boomer couple, Richard and Margaret, whose lives are, by turns, mundane and historicized in that single setting. The furniture and styles change, and with the help of A.I., the stars were also digitally de-aged.“It really is about, why do we remember the moments that we remember?” Wright said.In a video interview this week from New York, she and Hanks spoke about what attracted them to the film (the answer was largely Zemeckis), the enduring appeal of “Forrest Gump,” and what drives their choices now. The technical challenges of “Here” also energized them: There was no crafting — or saving — a performance in the edit; no way to cut around a missed mark except to redo a whole scene. “Tom and I, we’re so spoiled, we don’t ever want to shoot conventional format again,” Wright said of typical cinematography.Early reviews have been mixed, with some critics balking at the visual conceit, and the de-aging. Wright, 58, was having none of it. “It is so simple and beautiful and real and human,” she said. “We all have experienced something in this movie.”Hanks, 68, pondered why cynicism has become, as he said, “the default.”“I remain driven by this never-ending curiosity I have, about how it is true that good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people,” he said. The response could be cynicism, he said, but only if you’re seeking “the lowest common denominator.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Here’ Review: Life Is Like a Box of Regrets

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      Tom Hanks and Robin Wright reunite onscreen for a drama that showcases generations of existence.“Here” is an aeon-spanning experimental collage by Robert Zemeckis that plants the camera in one spot for give-or-take three billion years. The lens is static; the span, epic. An acre of New Jersey braves meteors, an ice age and dinosaurs. Sometime between the Pleistocene and Columbus, a deer tiptoes past. Alan Silvestri’s score swells triumphantly. Evolution!Mostly, however, we’re staring at two houses. The first was erected before the American Revolution and belongs to William Franklin (Daniel Betts), a British loyalist who calls his kite-flying father Benjamin Franklin (Keith Bartlett) a terrorist. Secure in its place in history, the colonial mansion lords its importance over the second house, the lesser house, that you’d never drive out of your way to visit. But these humble digs are the star. Around 1900, the home’s walls get built around the camera, and in turn, the film builds itself around the mundane goings-on inside. Hovering midway between the sofa and the kitchen, we witness a century-plus of holidays, lazy days, kisses, arguments. Nothing worth a commemorative plaque. It’s a tribute to banality.Richard McGuire’s groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name and conceit used comic panels as a special effect, overlapping anonymous figures into a blurry rumination on time. One page illustrates the chronic popularity of Twister. Another captures the progression of swears: “Nincompoop.” “Dweeb.” “Dirt bag.”Zemeckis can be more interested in pixels than people. But this time, he wants recognizable people, too — heck, he wants movie stars — so he and Eric Roth tighten the screenplay’s focus to one family across six decades. There are glimpses of other characters: two Indigenous lovers (Joel Oulette and Dannie McCallum), a snippy suffragist (Michelle Dockery), a jazzy inventor and his wife (David Fynn and Ophelia Lovibond), and a modern family (Nicholas Pinnock and Nikki Amuka-Bird) who exist so close to our era that they come across bland.The design team does a fantastic job delineating the years. Yet, the film treats everyone else like parentheses around the baby boomers Richard and Margaret (played by a de-aged Tom Hanks and Robin Wright), who fall in love as teenagers. Infatuated and naïve, Margaret coos, “I could spend the rest of my life here.” Cut to the young couple pregnant and married (in that order) and inheriting both the furniture and the mistakes of the groom’s parents (Paul Bettany and Kelly Reilly).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Remo Saraceni, 89, Dies; Inventor of the Walking Piano Seen in ‘Big’

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      His keyboard, which became famous after Tom Hanks melodiously hopped on it, displayed Mr. Saraceni’s vision of technology powered by “people energy.”Remo Saraceni, a sculptor, toy inventor and technological fantasist best known for creating the Walking Piano that Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia danced on in a beloved scene of the hit 1988 movie “Big,” died on June 3 in Swarthmore, Pa. He was 89.The cause was heart failure, said Benjamin Medaugh, his assistant and caretaker. Mr. Saraceni died at Mr. Medaugh’s home, where he had been living in recent years.Mr. Saraceni’s specialty was “interactive electronics,” he told New York magazine in 1976. His other inventions included a clock that could reply aloud when you asked it the time, a stethoscope stereo system that could boom out your heartbeat, and Plexiglas clouds that lit up at the sound of a whistle with a pastel color appropriate for a room’s lighting. All were powered by what Mr. Saraceni (pronounced SAR-ah-SAY-nee) called “people energy”: the voice, touch and heat of the human body.The power of this sort of technology to enchant its users became a pivotal plot element of “Big,” and in turn the central prop in one of the most fondly recalled scenes in recent movie history.After wishing to be “big” at a magical Zoltar fortunetelling machine, the movie’s main character, Josh Baskin, transforms from a 12-year-old boy into a young adult (played by Mr. Hanks). He gets a clerical job at a toy company whose owner, Mac (Robert Loggia), recognizes Josh as his employee one Saturday at F.A.O. Schwarz. Mac is a shrewd capitalist surveying his industry in action; Josh is a boy exulting in the world of toys (albeit in a man’s body).As Josh impresses Mac with his close knowledge of F.A.O. Schwarz’s wares, they happen upon Mr. Saraceni’s nearly 16-foot-long Walking Piano. With childlike absorption, Josh begins hopping on it to the tune of “Heart and Soul.” Mac, inspired by Josh’s un-self-conscious delight, joins him, making the performance a duet. To an awe-struck crowd, the two of them then do a rendition of “Chopsticks.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in Television

      With ‘Masters of the Air,’ a 10-Year Dream of Spielberg and Hanks Lifts Off

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      The Apple TV+ series is an heir to their World War II epic “Band of Brothers,” set this time among the bomber pilots known as the Bloody Hundredth.After Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks spearheaded the epic 2001 World War II series “Band of Brothers,” Spielberg got some feedback from one of his most important critics.His father, Arnold, a World War II veteran who served in what was then called the United States Army Air Forces, liked the series. But he wanted more aerial action. Then Spielberg and Hanks returned as executive producers in 2010 with “The Pacific.” Again, the elder Spielberg approved — with the same caveat.“‘Well, that’s a great series,’” Spielberg, in an interview this week, recalled his father saying. “‘But where’s the Air Force?’”Arnold Spielberg, who died at age 103 in 2020, would most likely be pleased with Spielberg and Hanks’s third World War II series (following the 1998 movie “Saving Private Ryan,” in which Spielberg directed Hanks). “Masters of the Air,” a nine-part Apple TV+ series starring Austin Butler and Callum Turner, premieres on Friday and chronicles the dangerous feats of the 100th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force, known as the Bloody Hundredth. The unit flew daytime bombing missions 25,000 feet over German targets knowing that the odds suggested they might not survive.With 10-man crews packed into B-17 bombers so big they were called Flying Fortresses, the 100th faced not only a constant barrage of enemy fire, but also thin air, subzero temperatures and the psychological strain of what often played out as suicide missions. An estimated 77 percent of the Eighth Air Force was killed, injured or captured; the number of fatalities, more than 26,000, was higher than that of the entire U.S. Marine Corps during World War II.B-17 bombers, packed with 10-man crews, were so big they were called Flying Fortresses. The Bloody Hundredth flew missions in them knowing that the odds suggested they might not survive. National ArchivesFor Spielberg, “Masters of the Air,” adapted from Donald L. Miller’s more expansive nonfiction book about the Eighth Air Force, is part of a continuing effort to keep World War II in sight as the years claim the lives of more and more veterans.“I see it as a consistent recognition of the courage and sacrifice of the greatest generation, in keeping their memories alive today in a society that looks ahead more than they look back,” he said. “Through these dramas, we can tell these stories and get people to not only watch our series, but to go online and start to explore and navigate the history of World War II. That’s a big win for us.”“Masters of the Air” was conceived a little more than 10 years ago, when Hanks called the screenwriter John Orloff, one of many writers who had worked on “Band of Brothers.” As Orloff recalled in a video interview, Hanks’s question was simple: “You want to write another one?”Hanks and Spielberg had a specific story line in mind, to be chiseled from Miller’s mammoth book. They wanted to zero in on the friendship between Maj. John Egan (Turner) and Maj. Gale Cleven (Butler). A study in contrasts — Egan, known as Bucky, was a hard-drinking raconteur; Cleven, known as Buck, was a stoic with swagger — the two men flew mission after mission, building a reputation for leadership under heavy fire.Austin Butler, left, as Maj. Gale Cleven, a stoic with swagger. And Callum Turner as Maj. John Egan, a hard-drinking raconteur. Cleven and Egan built a reputation for leadership under heavy fire.Apple TV+After writing the first episodes and the show bible (a comprehensive guide to a TV series being pitched), Orloff was tasked with writing the entire series. Even with the names attached, it was not a sure thing to get picked up; in 2016 the “Masters” team submitted scripts for the first three episodes to HBO, which had broadcast “Band of Brothers” and “The Pacific,” but the company passed on “Masters” “because of the price tag,” Spielberg said. That’s when Apple stepped in, ready to foot the bill. (HBO declined to comment; Apple would not disclose the budget.)“We were really fortunate to have Apple jump in and become our home,” Spielberg said.With intricate aerial sequences, massive sets, armies of extras and extensive research undertaken beyond the source book, the series “was a monumental undertaking,” Orloff said.“None of us thought it would take 10 years,” Orloff added. “I thought it would be a three- or four-year project, which is what ‘Band’ was and ‘The Pacific’ was, from inception to production. But this one was a bit tougher — the ambition of it, the scale of it. It was very intimidating to get this made.”For Butler, 32, and Turner, 33, the series was a chance to immerse themselves in the war’s history and the sacrifices made by the men they play. Specifically, “Masters” confronts what it meant to go “flak happy,” a phrase of the time that describes what is now known as post-traumatic stress disorder.“It’s atrocious what they had to face, the most violent space a human could have ever put themselves in,” Turner said in a video interview. “What our show does is explore that trauma, what that did to their mind and their body and their spirit and their soul.”Butler, in a separate video interview, recalled speaking with a 102-year-old veteran of the Bloody Hundredth who said that the air would get so cold up there that his feet would freeze to the bomber pedals and have to be chipped out. The physiological hardships only aggravated the mental strain of seeing friends blown out of the sky and never knowing if your turn might come the very next day.“One of the elements that you see in the show is them dealing with the psychological toll,” Butler added. “It was just unfathomable.”There is an aspect of World War II storytelling “that can be absolutely lost in fanciful nostalgia, which bores me to tears and, I think, also misses the point,” Tom Hanks said. Apple TV+One movie that inspired Spielberg and Hanks was “Twelve O’Clock High,” the 1949 World War II drama about a B-17 bomber unit suffering heavy losses and low morale. “That was actually one of the first films made after World War II that embraced PTSD,” Spielberg said. He added: “Even though a Flying Fortress is a heavily armed heavy bomber with 50-caliber guns all over it, it is a very thinly constructed airplane with not a lot of steel, except sometimes in the floor. Just watching the series, I had a problem with my own claustrophobia.”Dee Rees, one of the series’s five directors, was drawn largely by a story line featuring the Tuskegee Airmen, the Black pilots and airmen who formed the 332nd Fighter Group and the 477th Bombardment Group of the U.S.A.A.F. The Tuskegee men are mentioned only once in Miller’s book, but Orloff felt it was important to give them airtime, especially since they wound up in the same German prisoner camp as some of the prisoners from the Eighth Air Force. President Harry Truman didn’t desegregate the Armed Services until 1948, but the Airmen earned high marks for their combat duty in World War II.“That was a big part of me wanting to do it, to tell that part of the story and do them some justice and show their bravery,” Rees said in a telephone interview. “The very thing they’re fighting for abroad is what they’re going to be denied on their home soil. These men are more American when they’re overseas than they are at home, even though they are risking their lives and doing things that are just as difficult as their white counterparts.”Stories about World War II can veer into hazy reverence for a bygone era, more fodder for the nostalgia machine. World War II, after all, has become something of a cultural industry, leaving a mountain of books, television and film. But for Hanks, this interpretation doesn’t apply here. He thinks the specific themes of “Masters of the Air” are not only resonant but also applicable to the present day.There is an aspect of World War II storytelling “that can be absolutely lost in fanciful nostalgia, which bores me to tears and, I think, also misses the point,” Hanks said by phone on Wednesday.“Here was a time in which there was just no question that a division was going to take place in the human condition,” he said. “You had truly evil empires that were murdering people and enslaving them in order to hold sway over their part of the world.” But even if today’s conflicts feel more complicated, he added, the things that matter most remain the same, like good citizenship, like civic duty and responsibility.“Of course the world is completely different now,” he said. “But you still come down to the core issue of what is the truth, and what is justice, and what is my part to play in that? Isn’t that what all literature is kind of based on one way or another? Isn’t that what all storytelling comes down to?” More

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      Book Review: ‘The Making of Another Modern Motion Picture Masterpiece,’ by Tom Hanks

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      Whimsically chronicling the creation of a Marvel-style movie, “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece” sags under a deluge of detail.THE MAKING OF ANOTHER MAJOR MOTION PICTURE MASTERPIECE, by Tom Hanks. Illustrated by R. Sikoryak.Sidelined by the pandemic, some actors fired up ceramics or sang fragments of “Imagine.” Tom Hanks, one of the most prominent to contract an early case of Covid, bounced back by making a run at the Great American Novel. Alas, it is more Forrest Gump trotting from coast to coast than Sully landing on the Hudson.Titled “The Making of Another Major Motion Picture Masterpiece,” the book arrives at a crossroads for Hollywood. The Writers Guild of America went on strike this past week, seeking pay increases in an age of streaming and protections from that thundering Godzilla, artificial intelligence. The consequent halt of film and TV production deprives not only audiences, but also the vast number of workers required to get stories onscreen: extras, editors, costume and lighting designers, makeup artists, caterers, drivers, gofers, key grips.“Masterpiece” is a loving homage to those workers, a true insiderly ensemble piece in the vein of “The Player” (written by Michael Tolkin in 1988, directed by Robert Altman in 1992), or Quentin Tarantino’s eventually self-novelized “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.”Minus the murder and gore, of course — this is Tom Hanks.The novel also acknowledges a fading time when leading actors, even avatars of Everyman decency like the author, were royalty: their work shown not in living rooms but red-velvet-swagged “palaces.”It’s framed by one of the outlying courtiers of the industry: a fictional former freelance journalist and reviewer named Joe Shaw. Now teaching creative writing at a minor Montana college, he has been granted access to the set of “Knightshade: The Lathe of Firefall” — a movie based on a comic from a Marvel-like company — along with the Gay Talese-like superpower of narrative omniscience. He recedes after a foreword, like John Ray Jr. from “Lolita.”“Masterpiece” then pans very slowly — with lots of emphatic italics, arch ellipses and a few footnotes — over the full arc of the fake movie’s development. So we begin with the back story of the comic’s writer, Robby Andersen (pen-name TREV-VORR), who had been inspired by an uncle, Bob Falls, a Marine in World War II, and follow a very long yellow brick road through the seemingly triumphant release of “Knightshade” at a fancifully imagined 1,114-seat theater, the Grand Cinema Center in Times Square, where “a fellow in a tuxedo” plays “New York, New York” on a house organ.Charm abounds — again, this is Tom Hanks — but “Masterpiece” is too often a maddeningly excursive endeavor that made me think, more than once, of a Richard Scarry book without the drawings. Alternate titles: “Hollywood: Busy, Busy Town” or “What Do Movie People Do All Day?” (Actually, it does have drawings, by R. Sikoryak: an old-timey comic the boy Robby reads at the corner drugstore, then another he created while working at Kool Katz Komix as TREV-VORR, and then a movie tie-in for “Knightshade,” all fine places to rest one’s detail-wearied eyes.)The novel’s multitude of characters includes Bill Johnson, the writer-director of “Knightshade” (a film more “Iron Man” than “Avengers”); an obnoxious leading man named O.K. Bailey (OKB for short), who’s cast as Firefall; and Wren Lane, who wins the part of Eve Knight, the alter ego of Knightshade, a heroine who like many modern women has trouble sleeping.“Sure, she wants to make her bed with a decent chap when the time is right, but the time is never right!” Lane tells Johnson’s assistant, Allicia Mac-Teer, anachronistically (Hanksishly). “Nor is the chap.”Advised to go by “Al” because of sexism, the assistant gets hired after mastering a time management system at community college, “L.I.S.T.eN.,” short for “Let It Settle, Then eNact,” and using it to order Johnson his favorite frozen yogurt. (Pomodoro technique, move over.) Then there is Ynez Gonzalez-Cruz, driver for a Lyft competitor, PONY, whose ingratiation into the “Knightshade” base camp will eventually get her an office of her own and, after years of struggling in the gig economy, a salary that’s “a joke of abundance.”Moviemaking, Hanks would remind us, can be a rising tide, not in the depressing new climate change way, but the old optimistic American lift-all-boats way.He also conveys successfully that this “Business of Show” in the “City of Angles,” as Johnson nicknames it, is thoroughly exhausting, a realm where everyone is Wren Lane, waiting for the golden hour shot, showing up to get fake blood applied at 2 a.m. The word “coffee” appears, by my count, on 85 pages: triple espressos from a Di Orso Negro machine with frothed half-and-half for Mac-Teer; HaKiDo with oat milk for OKB; Pirate drip for a Teamster named Ace Acevido. Highly specific smoothies are fetched; catering tables are lovingly inventoried.“The offerings are both substantial, healthy snacks and stuff that is horrible for you but so very, very much appreciated,” our omniscient narrator shares. Sometimes “Masterpiece” reads like the thank-you speech Hanks, consummate nice guy, would give if granted unlimited time at the Oscars. You might admire its rah-rah spirit, yet still want to press fast-forward.A note on the type: Hanks has spoken and written extensively before, including in The New York Times, about his obsession with typewriters. A different antique model was featured in each of the 17 stories contained in his last book, a collection called “Uncommon Type.” Encountering a vintage Smith-Corona Sterling, Johnson’s chosen instrument, on Page 96 of “Masterpiece,” I rolled my eyes tolerantly.After turning 50 pages more and finding a minor character selling “Royals, Underwoods, Remingtons, Hermes, Olivettis, all in working order,”as if in an Etsy shop, I had to fight a strong urge to close the book, fire up a triple espresso and see if anything was happening in the tiny palace of my iPhone.THE MAKING OF ANOTHER MAJOR MOTION PICTURE MASTERPIECE | By Tom Hanks | Illustrated by R. Sikoryak | 499 pp. | Alfred A. Knopf | $32.50 More

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      in Movies

      ‘A Man Called Otto’ Surpasses Expectations at the Box Office

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      Ticket sales totaled $15 million over the holiday weekend, fueled by older audiences in the middle of the country.A nearly extinct species of theatrical movie — a conventional drama aimed at older ticket buyers in the middle of the country — sent a reminder to Hollywood over the weekend: If you build it (properly), they will come.“A Man Called Otto,” starring Tom Hanks as a cranky widower, will collect roughly $15 million over the four-day holiday weekend in the United States, for a total of $21 million since opening in limited release on Dec. 20, according to Comscore. That kind of sturdy debut has recently escaped pedigreed dramas like “Babylon,” “She Said,” “Amsterdam,” “Till” and “The Fabelmans,” leading to worries about the viability of dramas in theaters.For the most part, these films have been aimed at audiences on the coasts. “A Man Called Otto,” however, was marketed toward heartland audiences. Crowds came out in places like Detroit, Minneapolis, Denver and Salt Lake City, box office analysts said. None of the top 75 theaters for the film were located in Los Angeles or New York, which is very unusual.Ticket sales were “particularly vibrant in small-town theaters,” according to Sony Pictures Entertainment, which released the PG-13 film. About 60 percent of ticket buyers were female, and 46 percent of attendees were over the age of 55, Sony said. “A Man Called Otto” received warm reviews (68 percent positive, according to Rotten Tomatoes), with the obviousness of the plot the primary complaint. But ticket buyers loved it, as evidenced by a 96 percent positive audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes.“The audience for original adult films will absolutely return to theaters, if we don’t forget them,” Tom Rothman, the chairman of the Sony Motion Picture Group, said in an email. “And if you are able to strike a chord in Middle America, it can be especially strong.” “A Man Called Otto” took in 50 percent more than the $10 million that analysts predicted going into the weekend.“A Man Called Otto” cost about $50 million to make (not including marketing expenses), with financing shared by TSG Entertainment and SF Studios, a Swedish film and television company. A remake of a Swedish film and based on a best-selling novel called “A Man Called Ove,” it is the heartstring-tugging story of a depressed widower who finds himself in an unusual friendship with a new neighbor. Hanks co-stars with Mariana Treviño and a cat named Smeagol. The movie was directed by Marc Forster, who is known for “Finding Neverland” and “Quantum of Solace.”The top movies at the North American box office over the weekend were wide-release holdovers. In first place, “Avatar: The Way of Water” (Disney) collected about $38.5 million between Friday and Monday, for a five-week total of $563 million ($1.9 billion worldwide). “M3gan,” a horror comedy from Universal, ranked second, with estimated ticket sales of $21.2 million, for a two-week total of $60 million ($91 million worldwide). More

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      in Movies

      ‘A Man Called Otto’ Review: Tom Hanks Learns Life Lessons

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      Going against nice-guy type (at first), the star plays a misanthrope who’s pulled into caring for a neighboring family in need.In 2016, reviewing the film “A Man Called Ove” for this newspaper, I mused: “Sweden’s official entry for a best foreign-language film at the Academy Awards proves that Swedish pictures can be just as sentimental and conventionally heartwarming as Hollywood ones.”That movie, based on a best-selling Swedish novel, is about a thoroughgoing grump who becomes suicidal after the death of his wife, until interactions with new neighbors soften his heart. One supposes an American remake was inevitable, and here it is, directed by Marc Forster and starring Tom Hanks, with the main character renamed Otto.Usually U.S. remakes of foreign films tend to homogenize the source material. But “A Man Called Otto” is not only more bloated than the Swedish film, it’s more outré, in a way that’s hard to pin down.Forster handles the flashback of the back story (in which the star’s son, Truman Hanks, plays a younger Otto) in gauzy-arty fashion. When the older Otto — Hanks reaches back to his excellent work in “Catch Me If You Can” to nail down the man’s overarching irritability — contemplates his happy marriage, his mind always goes back to its earliest times. It’s curious, until the film reveals why it has avoided more recent memories, but by then the omission feels like a withholding cheat.Otherwise, obviousness rules the day here. When Otto visits an incapacitated former friend, the soundtrack spins Kenny Dorham’s version of the jazz chestnut “Old Folks.” Which is always nice to hear, admittedly. Later, a teenager initially upbraided by Otto tells him that Otto’s wife, who had been a schoolteacher, “was the only person who didn’t treat me like a freak, because I’m transgender.” As the television icon Marcia Brady once put it, “Oh my nose!”A Man Called OttoRated PG-13 for themes and language. Running time: 2 hours 6 minutes. In theaters. More

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      ‘Pinocchio’ Review: As the Story Grows

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      This live action and animated reimagining of the classic fairy tale takes too much time relaying its narrative.Surprising that Disney hired two previous directors before handing the strings of its partially-animated “Pinocchio” to Robert Zemeckis, Hollywood’s Geppetto, the creator on a quest to transform pixels into real boys (and girls and Grendels). Under Zemeckis’s attentive eye, Pinocchio’s yellow cap appears made of felt and his white gloves, affectionately hand-knit. When the marionette spirals his head like a pinewood Linda Blair, his joints make a satisfying creak. But boy oh real boy, is the script by Zemeckis and Chris Weitz a lifeless chunk of wood.The reimagining goes awry in the opening number — not “When You Wish Upon a Star,” the Oscar-winner that ascended to become the company’s signature tune, but a new ballad, “When He Was Here With Me,” sung by Geppetto (Tom Hanks) about his freshly concocted dead son. Someone wished to burden the old whittler with more motivation, and tacked on a dead wife to boot.This interminable shop sequence is paced so slowly that when a window closes, the image loiters until its latch drops into place. So slowly that when the Blue Fairy (Cynthia Erivo) freezes a screeching cuckoo clock, it feels like a cruel prank. So slowly that we forget that Hanks is ranked high among the most charming screen performers of all time as he opens his mouth to sing a second unwelcome new song in which he rhymes “Pinocchio” with “Holy Smoke-i-o.” And when Pinocchio (voiced by Benjamin Evan Ainsworth) and Jiminy Cricket (voiced by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finally head outside for fresh air, things do not improve.The key problem is the film’s fear of the original author Carlo Collodi’s theme: that children are raw material inclined to sloth, foolishness and self-serving fibs. (Collodi’s puppet kills the cricket and is haunted by its ghost.) Walt Disney’s 1940 cartoon softened the tyke’s sins to rambunctious naïveté. Now, he’s been flattened out of having a personality at all. His lumpen goodness turns the hot-tempered fairy tale into a dull after-school special about peer pressure, which seems to suggest that Geppetto should have just carved himself a helicopter to parent the boy.In place of temptation, the film serves up bizarre plot-fillers. Pinocchio learns about taxes and horse dung, meets a love interest (Kyanne Lamaya) and stares blankly at zingers directed toward the modern enticements of social media. (Pleasure Island now includes Contempt Corner where kids wave placards haranguing each other to shut up.) Joy can be found only in Luke Evans’s scary-fun Coachman (now saddled with unnecessary smoke monster minions) and a line where Jiminy seems to comment on the last decades of Zemeckis’s career: “Sure, there are other ways to make a boy — but I don’t think Geppetto gets out much, and I guess it’s just the best he could do with the tools he’s got.”PinocchioRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes. Watch on Disney+. More