"An adaptation of Carlo Collodi's classic story of the misadventured Pinocchio, Luigi Comencini's The Adventures of Pinocchio is a subtle rendering of the lessons of morality and ethics all people, not only children, must learn in order to survive, both socially and personally, in the great, big 'real world.' A visual mixture of the real, the absurd, and the surreal, The Adventures of Pinocchio chronicles the development of the woodworker Geppetto's son, Pinocchio, from a piece of firewood to an actual little boy. When Pinocchio is naughty, and he truly can be in very real ways, he turns from flesh to wood and it is only with the help of his 'mother,' played by Gina Lollabrigida, that he can re-attain human form. Unlike other, more familiar, screen adaptations of the 1881 tale, Comencini's emphasis is on the social conditions under which an individual develops and not the social development itself of that individual. Gone are the wily fox and cat which sidetracked Disney's marvelously animated Pinocchio; Comencini's Pinocchio is a live, blond-headed boy running barefoot through the village and ignoring his father. Furthermore, this Pinocchio is not going to be anyone's donkey or sheep; being good, he realizes, does not always mean following the rules, but being able to distinguish what is right from what is wrong. His devotion to his "Babbo," Geppetto, is what ultimately sets him right. Comencini's message remains true to Collodi's original: be good in the future, and you will be happy with yourself and perhaps, also, with the world around you." -Melissa Gibbs