When was the last time two films in a major Oscar category featured varying interpretations of a single character? The renowned lying puppet “Pinocchio” appears as a figure in both of the current frontrunners for Best Animated Feature at this year’s ceremony, due later in March.
DreamWorks’ “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish”, a sequel to the 2011 film and the sixth entry in the “Shrek” franchise, briefly features the wooden would-be boy as a character. “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio” is a new adaptation of the story about that same wooden boy. The two films are joined by more than the puppet, though. Both weave tales of magic and fantasy into somewhat sombre real-world allegories about death and life and family. And both films, despite their occasionally inspired engagements with magic as restrictive and full of possibility, feel more inelegant and overfamiliar than inspired or striking in their invocation of familiar characters and stories.