A great movie that reduces the Zemeckis version to a minor footnote. Setting it in fascist Italy adds a whole new layer of depth to this story, but I also noticed Del Toro’s pulling some ideas from his own work here, _The Devil’s Backbone_ in particular. Voice acting’s great, I love that he cast the greatest working actress as a non-speaking monkey. Visually it’s perfect, that’s almost to be expected from this director. However, this film in particular has a stop motion animation style I’ve never seen on film before, the textures are unique and beautiful. My only real complaint comes with the songs, not only because they’re generally poorly written and performed (I’m very clearly hearing the pitch correction, which isn’t intentional), but they also felt more sentimental and Disney-ish than what the rest of the film seemed to be going for. Thankfully, most of them were quite short.

8/10