Pete's Dragon (2016)

Between the time of Walt Disney’s passing in 1966 and the supposed renaissance started by “The Little Mermaid,” the Walt Disney film studio released so many decent children’s films. “Pete’s Dragon,” the 1977 live-action-with-animation musical fantasy co-starring the pop singer Helen Reddy, was one of those flicks – a movie that shows love and nice nostalgia from those who it as children, but barely the wonder of those viewers’ parents remembered “Bambi.”

Glenn Kenny said in his review, “It is slightly unfair to say that this reboot of “Pete’s Dragon” is middling on a larger scale, but it’s not entirely inaccurate either.” The movie tells its basic story at a nice look: A boy, Pete (Oakes Fegley), after a car accident that kills his parents (Esmée Myers and Gareth Reeves), is saved from a completely savage future by a dragon he names Elliott (John Kassir). Kenny said, “Pete and Elliott, a computer-animated dragon with green fur, pleasingly leonine facial features, and an emotive noise vocabulary that borrows from both Scooby-Doo and Chewbacca, enjoy a hunky-dory forest life until the pair are discovered by nearby townspeople.” The one plays by a wise Robert Redford, naturally, has seen the dragon himself, in the past. A family team led by Bryce Dallas Howard, as Redford’s daughter, comes to believe in the dragon.

Kenny noted, “The director David Lowery’s independent film pedigree (his previous feature was the accomplished, although self-serious, outlaw romance “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints”) suggests that he would apply a singular perspective to this material.” However, Pete’s Dragon is largely as objective as it is swift. (Lowery also wrote the film’s screenplay with Toby Halbrooks.) Only one shot, a close low-angle view of Pete and Elliott near the end of the film, succeeds as typical. At one point, Redford’s character, Meacham, insists that people need to be open to “magic.” Kenny ended his review by saying, “This sentimental, nearly genteel movie demonstrates there’s a world of difference between invoking magic and conjuring it.”

As a remake, I think this film is quite good. If you have seen the original and liked it, see the remake. As remakes goes, it’s not that bad and is one that you can see and enjoy. Check it out and see for yourself. I promise you will love it.

Tomorrow I will look at a film that I found myself laughably enjoying in “Disney Month 2021.”