Recent reviews

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  Review by Danny Baldwin ★

  On the rare occasion that Roberto Benigni’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning “Life is Beautiful,” a profoundly strange adaptation of “Pinocchio,” is remembered by Americans, it is usually for the film’s comically bad English-language dub. Certainly, it’s a challenge to make any dub worthy of being taken seriously, but this particular job, featuring once-teen star Breckin Meyer as the titular puppet-turned-real-boy, was monumentally bad. So bad that it’s hard to believe that most of the voice-work didn’t intend to parody the film, as if part of a “Mystery Science 3000”-type scenario driven by absurd vocal inflections of line-readings rather than direct wise-cracking.

  Focusing on the dub, however, is a distraction from just how bad the actual movie is. “Pinocchio” is a…