Pauly Shore's 'Pinocchio: A True Story' Dub

About

Pauly Shore's Pinocchio: A True Story Dub refers to the American release of the Russian animated film Pinocchio: A True Story, which stars actor Pauly Shore in the title role. Multiple clips of Shore's voice acting went viral on social media due to the way his voice seems to jarringly not match the character. His reading of the line "Father, when can I leave to be on my own?" became a meme on TikTok, and other clips from the film have become popularized due to the perceived poor voice acting of other cast members.

History

Pinocchio: A True Story was directed by Russian director Vasily Rovenskiy, and the original cast is Russian.^[1] On January 26th, 2022, Lionsgate premiered the trailer for the English dub of Pinocchio: A True Story, gaining over 1.3 million views in two months. The dub stars Pauly Shore as Pinocchio, Jon Heder as his horse Tybalt and Tom Kenny as Gepetto.

Father, When Can I Leave To Be On My Own

On January 31st, 2022, Twitter user AniMat505^[2] posted the clip of Shore's Pinocchio saying "Father, when can I leave to be on my own?," gaining over 23,000 retweets, 25,000 quote-tweets and 187,000 likes in two months (shown below).

The tweet helped the clip become a meme on TikTok, where users joked that Pinocchio sounded like a young gay man. On February 4th, 2022, the official Lionsgate TikTok page posted the clip from the trailer containing Pinnochio's dialogue with an on-screen text box reading "Wait til you hear it…" with the video description reading, "the yassification of #pinocchio" (shown below). The post implies that Lionsgate was aware of the clip becoming a meme, and was leaning into the meme to market the film. The video gained over 12.1 million views in five days.

Reception

The film was released on February 17th, 2022, in Russia^[1] and on March 22nd, 2022, in a DVD-exclusive release in America. While it did not receive many reviews from movie critics, it was largely panned by viewers, and most of the high ratings came from trolling users. The film has a score of 4.7/10 on IMDb^[1] and 2.1/5 on Letterboxd.^[3]

Online Presence

After the film's U.S. release, social media users unearthed other clips from the film to dunk on the English dub's perceived poor voice acting, particularly Shore's performance. On March 22nd, 2022, Twitter user @Saberspark posted a clip of Pinocchio getting shot, ostensibly to mock the voice acting in the clip, gaining over 14,000 retweets and 99,000 likes in two days (shown below, top). In the replies, user @BradleySmithYT posted a clip of Pinocchio leaving Gepetto, saying "Nyeh, skedehh, skedehh" as he approaches his horse. The clip gained over 2,200 retweets and 19,000 likes (shown below, bottom).

On March 23rd, Twitter user @imonly5feet posted another clip from the film to mock Shore's performance, gaining over 13,000 retweets and 82,000 likes in roughly 24 hours (shown below).

Search Interest

External References