Disney’s live-action remake of the 1940 classic Pinocchio arrived as part of Disney+ Day’s new arrivals on the platform. Like many of Disney’s recent movies, Pinocchio is a visually updated retread of one of their original animated movies from their long history, but also in line with movies such as The Lion King, the film has been slammed as lifeless by critics and audiences. Starring Tom Hanks and Cynthia Erivo and the voice talents of Keegan-Michael Key, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, among others, and directed by the legendary Robert Zemeckis, it is easy to expect a lot from the movie, but it seems once again the flashy modern visuals just can’t match the heart and soul of the 80-year-old original.

Pinocchio follows the story of the 1940 movie pretty much to the letter. While the creation of the likes of Honest John, Jiminy Cricket, and the title character himself in CGI are visually impressive and something Walt Disney himself could never have believed possible, it seems that the surface look of the movie doesn’t help when it comes to the first reviews. Similar to complaints about The Lion King, it appears that the transition of 2D to 3D animation has resulted in a group of characters that are like-for-like with the original movie but, somewhere along the line, lost the soul of Walt Disney’s second feature-length animation.

While the main purpose of Disney’s recent and upcoming slate of live-action remakes seems to be to take the original cartoon movie, expand them in mostly unnecessary ways and tell the exact “Disney” story in a “real world” setting. Having seen huge box office success with Beauty and The Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, and the upcoming The Little Mermaid and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs expected to repeat that, it is no wonder that even with increasingly bad reviews, the list of live-action remakes is set to continue growing.

Related: Tom Hanks Says He Approached Robert Zemeckis for Pinocchio Role

Many Critics Did Not Hold Back on Pinocchio’s Reviews

Tom Hanks in Pinocchio
Disney+

While Pinocchio will undoubtedly get reasonable viewer numbers on Disney+, the film’s Rotten Tomatoes score is currently languishing at 31% on the critics’ side and not faring much better at 47% audience score. The reviews unanimously call out the lack of magic and inspiration in the movie and criticize the way the exact same story from 1940 is being told, with very little deviation of note.

However, Pinocchio does have some supporters, and they seem to be the ones who have not expected any dramatic changes and have genuinely just arrived to enjoy the movie for what it is. When it comes to Disney’s live-action remakes, part of the reason for these new updates is to tell the version of the story that is specific to Disney, but uses a range of technology that was never available when the original movies were made. While this clearly works for some people, there are more and more critics and viewers who are just starting to demand a bit more than Disney is offering right now.