
Pinocchio is the classic tale of a wooden boy who comes to life by the power of magic. It’s similar to Child’s Play, except that the puppet has a father instead of a mother. As the story begins, we learn of Geppetto, an elderly man who lives with a cat and makes toys for children. He models one toy after a small boy and dances with it in his cottage. But this isn’t a story about Megan’s Law; it’s a story about love, honesty, courage, hope and bugs with hats.
“I wish Pinocchio was a real boy,” Geppetto says creepily just before going to bed one night. As he sleeps soundly with his glasses on (in case he needs to read fine print in his dreams, I presume), the Blue Fairy enters through a window and brings the wooden puppet to life. The Blue Fairy wears a sparkling dress, speaks with a Marilyn Monroe voice and is sort of like the tooth fairy, except she doesn’t collect teeth and she doesn’t steal little boy’s souls.
The first person to notice the miracle is Jiminy Cricket, who is different from everyone else in the house, in that his name does not end with the letter O. He is made Pinocchio’s conscience, Geppetto pees himself with excitement, and before long Pinocchio is off to school. He doesn’t make it, however, as he is soon brought to Stromboli, the musical puppet show director who is sort of a cross between Andrew Lloyd Webber and Satan.
Geppetto is brokenhearted over Pinocchio’s disappearance, but his cat Figaro is unfazed as he prepares to eat his fish dinner in front of the pet fish (strangely, the pet fish doesn’t seem to mind). Jiminy, meanwhile, finds Pinocchio in a cage, where he sits and mourns with the imprisoned puppet (as opposed to, like, going for help). But everything is fine when the Blue Fairy sets them free and Pinocchio learns his lesson (not really).
Before long, Pinocchio finds himself getting suckered by the same honest fellow who brought him to Stromboli in the first place, and before you know it, he is on the way to Pleasure Island with a young Danny Bonaduce. The “pleasure” is apparently meant to be ironic, because the kids are all turned into donkeys and sent to the salt mines, and Pinocchio barely escapes with his life. Say what you will about Pleasure Island, it’s still safer than Six Flags.
Pinocchio returns home and finds that Geppetto is not there. He’s out searching for the puppet boy…apparently he checked all of the local malls, movie theaters, and digestive tracts of large mammals, because he and his pets are stuck in the belly of a whale. How delightfully biblical. Pinocchio finds them, the whale sneezes them out, and everybody lives happily ever after.
So what’s the moral of the story? Simple: be a villain. Even if your villainy doesn’t always pay off, you can always try again because there will probably be no consequences for your actions. Stromboli: no consequences for his actions. Honest John and Gideon: no consequences for their actions. The coachman: no consequences for his actions (even after he sends innocent kids into lives of slavery). Let’s hear it for villains!


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