[7.3/10] I tend to think of movies in terms of their stories. I think about characters and plots and dialogue first and foremost because they’re the things that grab me. But the beauty of cinema is that it is malleable. It can be a medium where storytelling is put at the forefront, or it can be a visual showcase, or it can be a freeform dose of bold expressionism. There’s no one right way to do it, which is what makes film such an exciting, but also difficult, medium to wrap your arms around, no matter how long you’ve been steeped in it.

Pinocchio, the Walt Disney Animation Studios release from 1940, is pretty weak in the story department. Based on an Italian children’s novel, the Disney adaptation is a simple morality tale. The title character is a marionette come to life, tasked with earning his way to becoming, ever so famously, “a real boy.” Along the way, he gives into any number of simple temptations and suffers the consequences, only to see the error of his ways and earn the transformation of his wood and paint into flesh and blood.

There’s meat to that story, but there’s just not much to it in execution. Each temptation goes wrong very quickly and Pinocchio recants just as fast. He skips going to school and takes “the easy road” by becoming an actor, only to end up the prisoner of a broad ethnic stereotype. He famously tells a series of lies only to watch his nose grow to comical lengths, replete with a birds nest. He succumbs to the allure of Pleasure Island only to nearly turn into a donkey before he realizes the problem and escapes.

Those errors and escapes just don’t have moral force because Pinocchio is essentially too innocent and oblivious to really deserve any blame for what happens. During most of these events, he was literally born yesterday, and his naivete makes those consequences feel pretty undeserved. Pinocchio seems genuinely excited to go to school and return to his father, only to be swindled by “Honest Joe” taking advantage of his rube-like “gee whiz” qualities. Hell, it’s not even clear why he lies to the Blue Fairy in the famous nose-growing scene. This stuff just sort of happens.

At best, you can read it as a warning to be on your guard. The plain didactic message of Pinnochio is that young boys should go to school, tell the truth, and avoid vices like drinking, smoking, fighting, and destructiveness. But the broader message is that there’s any number of hucksters out there who will try to take advantage of your innocence and point you in the wrong direction for their own ill-gotten gains. There’s a literalism to the movie’s aesops (lies that are “as plain as the nose on your face” and literal jackassery), but also a broader lesson that the world is full of perils and tricks, which makes it all the more necessary to listen to that vaunted conscience and learn right from wrong.

But at worst, it’s just a blunt and societally-mandated lesson to the young men and women expected to watch this movie that they should be good and behave and do right. There’s nothing wrong with that exactly, but it makes for a pretty dull narrative when most of what happens to the hero is either outside of their control or not really their fault.

But the truth is that Pinocchio isn’t really about its story. It’s about the animation: the expressive movements of puppets and crickets and other fumbling, dancing, characters; the lush and colorful backgrounds that bridge the gap between something real and something magical; the looks and gestures of rotoscoped fairies and Warner Bros.-esque anthropomorphic foxes alike that populate the film and give it life.

On those terms, Pinocchio soars. Much of the film feels like throat-clearing, with long stretches of characters repeating obvious information or laying out the point of a given vignette. And yet, reading those scenes as an excuse for Disney’s team of animators to depict Jiminy Cricket bumbling through an array of imaginative cuckoo clocks and other knick-knacks, or to have a regrettable Romani caricature bounce around like his midsection is filled with superballs, or to have an impossibly adorable kitty cat smile and tussle and exalt at each bit of attention or interruption, the movie is a triumph.

It’s also a classic in terms of its music. There’s a reason that almost every song in the film has become an indelible part of the Disney songbook. “I Got No Strings” is infectious as hell and backed with some of Pinocchio’s best animated moves. “Give a Little Whistle” is an ear-worm (ear-cricket?) that gives Jiminy the chance for more visually fun hijinks. “Hi Diddly-Dee” is the song so nice, Disney reused in Peter Pan. And the seven note-sting of “When You Wish Upon a Star” has become the studio’s signature melody. It’s hard to separate the merit of these tunes from a lifetime of internalizing them through cultural ephemera, but they stand out nonetheless.

The movie’s best stretch, though, comes when it marries its aesthetic brilliance with the most compelling part of its story. Pinocchio choosing to go find and rescue his father from the belly of a whale is one of the few times in the movie he takes deliberate, meaningful action in the picture. It’s an important moment of character growth and intelligence (which is good since “Pin-oke” is a literal and figurative dummy for most of the movie) that arguably earns him his humanity. And it provides an excuse for the animators to deliver some brilliant water-drenched action that still dazzles eighty years later.

The encounter with Monstro the Whale is easily the high point of the film. The joyousness of Pinocchio’s reunion with Gepetto, the fearsomeness of the aquatic mammal in action, and the suspense and cleverness of Pinnochio and company’s escape through his gaping maw prove to be both the movie’s narrative and aesthetic peak. The design team pulls out all the stops for the raging climax, and there’s genuine stakes and choices for the hero of the story that makes it more engaging than his other nigh-random misfortunes and maladies.

But even if that’s the only point where Pinocchio offers a story worth telling, it’s still worth watching for its visuals alone. Narrative need not be the point of a trip to the theater. It can also transport us, amuse us, tickle us, or amaze us with personalities, performances, and presentations that don’t have much in the way of plot, but which find other methods to earn our interest and joy. The cinematic tale of a wooden boy, and all the expressive friends and colorful locales he runs into along the way, certainly qualifies.