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Movie · Fantasy, Drama, Animated · 2022 · PG

Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio: parents' guide

10+our pick

Best for ages 10 and up. Rated PG for dark thematic material, violence, peril, some rude humor and brief smoking.

A beautiful but dark stop-motion fairy tale best for about 10 and up, and much heavier than the Disney version. It opens with Geppetto's young son killed in a bombing, then follows a wooden boy in Mussolini's Italy who dies and comes back more than once. Expect wartime bombings, a father who orders his son to shoot a friend at a military camp, a cruel carnival owner, eerie afterlife creatures, a sea monster, and Geppetto getting drunk in his grief. Language is limited to insults and potty humor, and there is no sexual content. Sensitive kids may find the deaths and grief upsetting.

What's in it

Violence

Moderate

Bombings kill adults and children, including a boy at the start. Pinocchio dies several times, once run over by a truck; a man falls from a cliff, a monkey is beaten, and boys play war games with paint guns before one is handed a real gun. Little blood.

Language

Mild

Mostly insults such as 'fool,' 'filthy coward' and 'worthless,' plus one 'frigging,' a 'bugger,' an 'oh my God,' and potty jokes about poop and farts, including a silly song.

Sex and nudity

None

None. There is no romance, kissing, nudity or sexual humor of any kind; the closest thing is a father's love for his son.

Drinking, drugs and smoking

Moderate

Grieving Geppetto drinks a bottle nearly dry, carves Pinocchio in a drunken rage and passes out on the floor. Other grieving parents drink, and a sea captain stubs out a cigarette.

Scary or intense scenes

Moderate

Dark imagery throughout: a child's funeral, a crucified Christ, an afterlife run by a sphinx-like Death with skeletal rabbits, a many-eyed wood spirit, a giant sea monster and angry mobs. The grief scenes are intense.

Sensitive topics

  • Death of a child
  • Death of a parent

Worth talking about

Geppetto wants Pinocchio to be the son he lost, and the official wants his boy to be a soldier. Talk about loving people for who they are, and the difference between obeying and doing what is right.

Where to stream →

On our lists

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Checked October 13th, 2026 against Common Sense Media, Plugged In, the MPA, Wikipedia, bbfc.co.uk. The age is our judgment, not an official rating, and every family draws its lines differently: read the notes, not just the number. Spotted something we missed? Tell us. How we rate.