THEY ARE RELEASING IT DUBBED IN THE US.

I'm sure they'll release a subtitles version at some point, maybe in fewer theaters (like in NY and LA) or after the dubbed version has been in theaters for some time. I myself prefer subtitles but I also understand their using dubbing because this is sort of a children's film, and kids aren't going to want to read their way through a movie, you know? :)

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Better still, why not learn Italian? Michel Thomas, apparently, has a CD course that does it in 8 hours! Check ebay.

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The "Amerikan" version is about 20 minutes shorter than the original, and it's very badly cut up, in my [not so]humble opinion. The funniest little details have been omitted, beginning - literally - with the first minutes of the movie. I much prefer watching the original, as wobbly as my Itailan is, it's much more pleasurable than the mutilated Hollywood mutant.

I absolutely wouldn't see this movie with subtitles in a theater. Since it's a children's story, I would have to assume there would be youngsters present who couldn't read at all, or couldn't read quickly enough to keep up with subtitles, so there would be constant whines of "What did he say?" along with the annoying drone of mommies reading to their wee ones. I'm not paying to sit through that nightmare.

I saw the dubbed version and it was easy to tell that it would have been better undubbed, but unfortunately I don't understand Italian. If there is ever a subtitled DVD released I might consider renting it and watching it again, but on the whole the film really wasn't interesting enough to make me want to see it twice.

As others have said, RB's major mistake was that he insisted on playing the part of Pinocchio. If he had been able to forego vanity and cast a boy or at least a young man instead of keeping the starring role for himself, the film might have been better. Pinocchio played by a balding middle-aged man wasn't childlike and endearing, he was just plain creepy.

The region 1 DVD has both the Italian and American versions on it, each with subtitle options. This thread was started nearly three years ago, why is it even still active?

Oldest thread I've seen on this site.

Anyway, the dubbing for this particular movie sucked, but I think the CONCEPT of dubbing movies for the US should be reconsidered. Think about it - in the 70s, foreign horror movies, spaghetti westerns, and kung fu movies were dubbed for the US market and got wide releases. There was a popular film industry that could actually hold its ground against American movies.

Now it's all subtitled, and great... you can see the original version - in two theaters and with five other people. Maybe dubbing could break foreign films out of that ghetto.