Metacritic reviews

Along with Dumbo, which immediately followed it, this 1940 classic, the second of the Disney animated features, is probably the best in terms of visual detail and overall imagination as well as narrative sweep.

The movie is genuinely exciting and romantic, great to look at, and timeless.

Every element in Pinocchio shimmers with the energy of young artists reveling in their newly discovered powers of creation.

Walt Disney has waved his magic wand over Collodi's world-famous fairy story, Pinocchio, and presto! he has changed it into the most enchanting film ever brought to the screen.

It still is the best thing Mr. Disney has done and therefore the best cartoon ever made.

The charm, humor and loving care with which it treats its inanimate characters puts it in a class by itself.

This was Disney's second full-length animated feature and it may well the greatest of the studio's cartoon classics.

Pinocchio is a substantial piece of entertainment for young and old. Both animation and photography are vastly improved over Walt Disney's first cartoon feature, Snow White. Animation is so smooth that cartoon figures carry impression of real persons and settings rather than drawings.

Pinocchio redeemed Disney from the parlor trickery of Snow White and suggested animated features could indeed dance without strings.

Pinocchio, in fact, probably shows Disney's virtues and vices more clearly than any other cartoon.