Fantastic Fest 2009: Buratino: Son of Pinocchio

Buratino's mother lives alone and all she wants is to have a child of her own. One night she thinks she wishes upon a star but what she's really wishing upon is an etheral seed that impregnates her and gives her a son. Growing up in Badville, the troubled Buratino forms a gang in his teenage years and robs the people of neighboring Goodville, often in song. The secret of Buratino's birth is soon discovered by the villainous Karabas Barabas who desires something hidden deep inside the boy. Buratino must do battle with Barabas' thugs and ultimately Barabas himself, all the while trying to make it with Barabas' hot, blue-haired daughter Malvina. If anything, what Buratino, Son of Pinocchio demonstrates to us what can happen to a project that has trouble getting off the ground and started. The director Rasmus Merivoo told his audience after the screening of all the trouble the production went through leading up to filming: cutting staff, dropping actors, script rewrites. This is the kind of production hell that no one wishes upon their worst enemies. Unfortunately for Merivoo it is simply too evident that all this trouble had taken its toll on the film and the haphazard attempts to at least complete the film and get it done before anything else troubling came up hurt it even more. The story itself really isn't that hot either. Bumbling henchmen, dimwitted friends, a long lost father stuck in the walls of a high rise building for many years, Pinocchio seed coming out your nose. It's all just rather silly. Mix into that rather sad post production effects and doing ADR voice over for all of your cast members makes it look like a made for TV special. Intended to be a teen film it certainly is juvenile and manages at best to at least match the attention span of a teenager with short scenes and tidbits of the story offered every couple of minutes never committing to any lengthy explanation or prose. At least the musical numbers offer to its intended teen audience a rauncious rock and roll soundtrack, though it is more laughable than amusing to watch Buratino serenade Malvina with a song while playing the same power chord over and over again. Full of a lot of good ideas I think the troubled start to the production and the constant turning around and rewriting of the story led to this disappointing end product. More stupid than silly I think that Rasmus Merivoo should have just walked away from this project the first time he threatened to leave in the first place. This is not the first kind of film I would wish upon anyone and I hope he gets better projects and better support the next time around.