Pinocchio: A Classic Case Of Child Neglect

Ah, poor old Geppetto. All he ever wanted was a son, but he spent his life so caught up in his craft it never happened for him. Now, in his later years, he pours his talents into a lifelike marionette, hoping to capture that missed chance of becoming a parent. After taking Pinocchio for a test run, he curls up in bed, wishing upon a star that his creation could become real. What a noble wish, and one that is granted almost instantaneously, and why not? Geppetto seems like a nice man, and one who sorely wishes to raise a child of his own. What could go wrong?

Well, everything really. It turns out Geppetto is a terrible father, and within twelve hours of gaining a son, he loses Pinocchio to some pretty unsavoury characters. Let's take a look at Pinocchio's formative education. After all, he's a marionette, made entirely of wood, who has just gained sentience. His language and movement are already developed, somehow, but he lacks any form of morality or knowledge of the outside world. Geppetto should be giving him some indication of how the world works, basic laws, hell, even a basic understanding of potential dangers he might face. What does Geppetto do instead? He dances.

Then, while Geppetto is faffing about with his accordion, Pinocchio promptly sets himself ablaze.

Pinocchio is lit AF

This clearly, immediately demonstrates Pinocchio's lack of even the most basic awareness of danger, you'd think the new parent would take this as an opportunity to instil some knowledge and lay some ground rules before introducing him to society at large. Oh no, wait, he sends him off to school the next morning. Alone.

"Bye son! You'll probably be fine! Good luck finding that school I just told you about!"

Now, that in itself seems like a pretty poor application of parenting skills, but on the surface Geppetto's village seems relatively friendly and peaceful, the streets are full of children laughing and making their way to school. But it's not until later we find out that there is, in fact, a mass child abduction ring taking wayward boys to a remote island, where they are turned into donkeys and sold to slavery.

Walt Disney was  world renowned for creating wholesome family entertainment.

I know sensationalist media was probably nowhere near as prevalent in those days as it is now, but I assume there's a fair level of awareness that something weird is going on. I don't think it's unreasonable to expect Geppetto to be in touch enough with local affairs to at least think it might be a good idea to escort his son to school on his first day. Way to drop the ball, Geppetto, I'm glad you got swallowed by a whale. Did you even exhaust the search in your own home town before taking to the sea?

But we can't just blame Geppetto for Pinocchio's predicaments. No, these mishaps are the result of systematic failure at every stage of the adoption process. After all, Geppetto clearly can't even look after a goldfish properly, and a seemingly omniscient fairy deemed him responsible enough to care for a human life?

To be fair, I've never heard anyone specifically say that fish can't eat cake.

Perhaps the Blue Fairy should be blamed for all this. She gave Pinocchio life, entrusted his care to a senior citizen with no previous parenting experience, and gave the wooden boy an odd selection of laundry list virtues that he should exhibit to become properly human. Also, upon realising she forgot to provide Pinocchio any sort of moral compass, she quickly bestows the role of "conscience" on the first thing she sees: A homeless cricket that gives a, quite frankly, inadequate definition of the concept. The Blue Fairy dubs him "Lord High Keeper of the knowledge of right and wrong", this is in reference to a cricket who mere hours ago had no problem breaking into Geppetto's house and setting up camp for the night.

If only we could all be like this shifty hobo criminal.

Of course, Jiminy Cricket fails to make any meaningful impact on Pinocchio's actions, failing to guide him away from an extremely dodgy cat and fox duo, and giving up at the first sign of trouble. It's not all his fault though, he's barely qualified for the job. So really, I place the blame squarely in the hands of the Blue Fairy, who seemed to be in such a rush to make her wish granting quota that she forgot to lay the basic groundwork and support system required for the adoption process of a wooden child. Sure, she turns up later to impart some basic moral knowledge when Pinocchio has been abducted for the second time, but she seems more intent on magical theatrics than, you know, returning him home safely.

"This thinly veiled moral lesson is all you need to help you on your way.
Also, I've recklessly created more life in the form of these orphan birds."

I guess the lesson is, be careful what you wish for, because an incompetent fairy may just plop a living being on your desk while you sleep, and leave you to figure it all out for yourself.

Geppetto is still a crappy father though.

Up: Where The Bitches At?

I love Up, it's one of Pixar's finest. It's one of the most heartfelt movies about love, loss and moving on that also involves a flying house. There are so many aspects to this movie that I'm sure I'll come back to it in future articles. But today I am not exploring the validity of a device that lets dogs talk, or whether it's even possible to fly your house. No, there is a much more pressing issue to attend to, a glaring plot hole that perhaps harbours a dark secret.

Meet Charles Muntz:

A famous explorer back in the day, he was accused of forging the skeleton of a giant bird that he brought back from Paradise Falls, South America. Stripped of his credentials, he vows to go back to Paradise Falls and never return until he finds another specimen.

Well, that was back in 1939, when the hero of our tale, Carl Fredricksen, was just eight years old. We can assume that Up takes place in the present day, which means that by the time Carl goes on his adventure, Charles Muntz has been away for around 70 years. Sure enough, when Carl runs into Charles, he's a distinguished old man:

Looks pretty good for being about 90. But hey, he's not in his prime. He can't go chasing after that bird all by himself, and that's why he has a plethora of loyal doggy companions to track it down for him, as well as cooking for him and who knows what else. He has a lot of dogs, and he tells Carl that he's lost a whole bunch in the labyrinth that is the bird's home. Question is, where do all these dogs come from?

We see at least four distinct species in the movie. First of all, obviously, we have Dug, the loveable bumbling Golden Retriever that tags along with Carl and Russell. There's also the leader of the pack, Alpha, who is a Doberman Pinscher. The majority of Muntz's dogs, though, are made up of Bulldogs and Rottweilers. These species have an average life expectancy of 10-12 years, 10-11 years, 8-12 years and 9-10 years respectively. Not counting the inevitable early deaths suffered through tracking the bird, that's at least six, maybe seven generations of dogs that Charles has bred while camping out in South Africa. 

Only problem is, all the dogs in his pack appear to be male, or at least have been given male voice collars. I'm not going to spend hours trawling through every frame looking for dog genitalia, so I'll go with my gut on this one. But not only do we not see females, there are no puppies around either. You'd expect a meticulous and dedicated adventurer like Charles Muntz would have a constant stream of dogs popping out of a bunch of carefully selected bitches. Well, of course he does, but he's a sophisticated man, he's got to keep up appearances for the various guests he ends up murdering. He can't have dog orgies in his museum and puppies ripping up his aviator jackets. So there's only one conclusion we can make, and it's a dark one.

Somewhere, in The Spirit Of Adventure, there is a secret dog sex dungeon. 

Well, perhaps not a dungeon per se, but certainly a separate area which is reserved for breeding. A place where females are kept as baby making machines, to be fertilised and to give birth, over and over again. The puppies remain there too, until they are mature enough to join the hunt, unless they're female of course. Then they probably stay there for life. They're probably still looked after quite well, but Muntz is clearly an old fashioned man, who probably values the males a lot more than the females. So while Carl and Russell are enjoying dinner with Charles (you know, before he tries to murder them), little do they know that nearby there are a bunch of dogs, locked in a room, being screwed and popping out babies until they die. Stay classy, Muntz.

Murder 101 - How To Not Spectacularly Fail At Killing Snow White

Well, here goes my first post, and what better way to start than with the movie that started it all? I am, of course, referring to Disney's Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs. It's a timeless tale of a beautiful princess finding unlikely friends while escaping from a wicked queen who wants her dead. But does the queen really want her dead all that much? I've noticed quite a few glaring holes in her plans which I will present in this post.

Meet Queen Grimhilde. Gosh, what a name. Gosh, what a face. Apparently she is the most beautiful woman in the land, so I'd hate to see her loyal subjects. Yeesh. Anyway, as you all probably know, Grimhilde likes to make sure she's still the most beautiful every day by checking with her magic mirror. I'm gonna go to a quick aside here and just make it known that this queen has a mirror that possesses an unknown, but probably infinite amount of wisdom. It can locate anyone you ask it to, it may even be able to provide information about the far reaches of the universe. But we'll never know, because the bitch who owns it just asks it to tell her how hot she is.

Ask me again. I dare ya, I double dare ya.

This guy probably just wanted to shake things up because he was bored out of his mind. So one day, he says Snow White, her stepdaugher, is the hottest girl in all the land. How do you like that, queen? Well, she doesn't, so she promptly sends Snow White out into the forest with the huntsman, instructing him to return with Snow White's heart in that apparently custom made heart container she's wielding up there.

There's your first mistake, lady. You want a job done, you're gonna want to do it yourself. Don't send a clearly apprehensive guy out to murder an innocent young woman, because this is likely to happen:

Look at him, crying like a baby. He's a compassionate human being, so it's no wonder he flakes out. But you know who else this guy is? Clearly a skilled hunter who can easily kill and dismember a wild animal, so it's no wonder he comes back with a pig's heart in the box. Why didn't the queen ask him to deliver her body? Then she could really be sure. It seems a little much to ask a guy to go out and murder someone, then spend a while tearing out their guts. It's just a shitty plan, and now Snow White has found refuge in a house inhabited by seven witnesses. 

No matter though, because the queen finds out the very next day, when she casually asks the mirror the same question she always does. But not only does he reveal that Snow White is alive, he divulges her location as well. What a dick. But still, this means it's your chance to shine, Grimhilde. Get out there and murder yourself some young girl. 

To the queen's credit, she does take things into her own hands, but it all seems to go downhill from there. Let's take a look at her spell book selection. 

Disguises. Yeah, that's the first one you want to go for when plotting a murder. Not the one right next to it labelled "Black Magic" and "Death". Personally I'd think that one would be the most effective. But what do I know, I'm not a sorceress. Well, if that's the way she wants to do it, disguising herself as a frail old woman is a good move. Lets her get up close and personal for a good old fashioned killing. But as for the actual murder, I think she needs a new spell book, or perhaps more common sense. Here's the spell she uses:

The Sleeping Death. You simply give the lady a poisoned apple, and she falls into a deep sleep, showing every sign of being a corpse. But wait, poisoned apple? That sounds pretty deadly by itself. Why do we need to cast a spell on it to make it less effective? I mean, look at the poison she dips that apple in:

Yikes, that's some nasty stuff. You could probably just go and pour some of that through Snow White's window and stroll back home. But no, the queen messes it up again. Even if she does eat the apple and falls asleep, she's still not going to be dead, just asleep. The mirror will tell you the same thing every day. I know that the queen assumes the dwarfs she's living with will find her and bury her alive, but we've seen before that leaving someone else to do the dirty work yields poor results. Besides, this spell has a freaking get-out clause. If Snow White receives first love's kiss, she wakes up and it's all fine again. In a fantastic oversight on the queen's part, she assumes that will never happen. But hey, maybe these dwarfs are really nice guys, maybe she's fallen in love already, and they're dirty men who like to kiss beautiful corpses. Not quite Disney material, but it's a distinct possibility. 

Well, the queen goes ahead with her ridiculous plan, and despite being warned by the dwarfs to not talk to anyone, Snow White falls hook, line and sinker, bites into the apple and falls under the spell. So I guess in a land of idiots, the idiotic sorceress is queen. Unfortunately she's rumbled by a group of particularly resourceful wild animals, the dwarfs come along to give chase, and Grimhilde ends up doing a quite excellent job of killing herself. 

Finally she gets her hands dirty, this would have been one of many good ways to dispatch the princess, but apparently this is only reserved for dwarfs. Grimhilde may have had the right frame of mind in the end, but she failed spectacularly before that. She let her prey escape by assuming an upstanding gentleman would just up and murder an innocent woman. She then chose probably the least effective spell in her arsenal to deal with it herself, before managing to kill herself in her first legitimate and potentially effective murder attempt. Not that rolling a boulder off a cliff with a stick is particularly refined, to say that's her best effort is more of an insult than anything. 

Next time just stick to more straightforward methods.

Evalumation - A Blog For The Thinking Man Who Watches Way Too Many Kid's Movies

Welcome to EvaluMation, a new blog in which I talk about several issues that remain undiscussed or unresolved in animated movies. I have two kids, and spend a fair amount of time watching movies with them. After around the tenth time watching the same thing I start to overthink, and pick up on things that just aren't right, or could be open to discussion, suspension of disbelief aside of course. So enjoy my ramblings, create some debate, let's blow these movies wide open.