Pete’s Dragon

To be honest, I wasn’t super excited to see this film in the first place; nothing really stuck out to me that warranted it being a “must see” film, but man, after walking out of the theater I’m sure glad I did.

Essentially a loose remake of the 1977 original, Pete’s Dragon is a relatively simple story full of wonder, emotion, and drama. After surviving a terrible car crash that claims the lives of both of his parents, a young boy named Pete (Oakes Fegley) finds himself lost in the woods in the middle of nowhere with no sense of direction, purpose, or guidance to speak of. Enter Elliott, a mythical dragon that no one believes to be real, who immediately takes the orphaned Pete under his wing (literally). Flash forward six years and Pete and Elliott have grown attached at the hip, both now living and thriving alone in the forest, loving every second of it, but when a group of local lumberjacks get dangerously close to Pete and Elliot’s home, Pete is accidentally discovered by a park ranger named Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), and her soon-to-be step-daughter Natalie (Oona Laurence), and brought back to civilization. Now with Pete gone without a trace and Elliott all by himself being constantly hunted by Gavin (Karl Urban) and his pals, it’s a race for the two friends to find each other before something terrible happens, or worse, before they are separated forever.

I vaguely remember seeing bits and pieces of the original Pete’s Dragon when I was a kid, enough to get the general gist of what it was about but not enough to make a real judgment on its quality as a whole, so going into this film I basically had next to no idea as to what would happen. In all honesty, I wasn’t feeling this film right off the bat. The first ten/fifteen minutes, while good, never actually “clicked” with me. I was iffy on Elliott’s design, a little underwhelmed by the setting and choice of music, a little bored by the way the story was playing out, but at around the fifteen/twenty minute mark, something changed; that classic Disney magic finally arrived. I don’t know what it was or why it flicked the “I like it!” switch in my head, but at one point I simply “got” it; I saw what the filmmakers were striving to accomplish and how they were going to go about doing it. The only real way I can describe the feeling is that it reminded me of the type of vibes I used to get while watching any classic animated Disney film from the 90’s and before. Everything just worked, you didn’t know why, but it did, and regardless of what others might say, it truly felt magical, and once that feeling finally hit me during my viewing, I was sucked in from there on out.

Not only does Pete’s Dragon succeed in ways that I thought were lost in movies nowadays, but it does so in the simplest, most easily accessible way. There’s no mind-bending twists in this film, no real edge of your seat action sequence or particular scene that sticks out as “the good one”, no confusing plotlines or over-stuffed, over-thought elements that make you question why it was put into the movie in the first place, no, what happens here, plain and simple, is that a bunch of filmmakers got together and made something great from beginning to end. They didn’t try to jazz it up with all the familiar “blockbuster” trappings, didn’t try to force something that the script wasn’t down our throats, they just told a moving story about a boy and his dragon that manages to coast on its simplicity while thriving on a solid foundation of character work and emotion.

The longer I watched it, the more I began to enjoy what was happening in front of me, my initial hesitation giving way to pure joy by the time the credits rolled, but it wasn’t until I reflected on why I liked the movie so much that I understood my feelings toward it. As mentioned above, part of the reason was due to the simplicity of the script. To compare this film to the movies coming out during the Disney animated “renaissance” is easy: it’s short, sweet, and has a clear story to follow mixed with some great emotional beats that hit you right in the feels while at the same time conveying a beautiful sense of wonder and, of course, magic. With all of these elements combined, this film feels nearly identical to any of the animated films that came out back in the day, a feat that is truly amazing considering Disney themselves have had such a hard time trying to replicate those types of movies in the past. To put it into simpler words, Pete’s Dragon felt like Pixar’s first foray into live action, and I’m not kidding.

My only qualms with the film comes from some relatively boring scenes that, while not entirely unnecessary, kind of bog down the proceedings from time to time. For every great scene like the one where Robert Redford’s character describes how seeing Elliott for the first time way back when had changed his life, there’s another scene that tries to hit the same heights but falls a tad short. While no means a deal breaker, there are more than enough scenes like the latter sprinkled throughout to drop this film from the 9-point range to just below it. Luckily, with some great child actors to carry the bulk of the story and a series of subtle set-ups and pay-offs that dig deeper than just surface expectation, the script manages to pull off so much by doing so little.

With The Jungle Book finally finding that magical touch that most Disney live-action attempts have stumbled and failed to achieve, Pete’s Dragon successfully gives Disney another live-action classic that is just as good as The Jungle Book, just on a totally different level. Complimented by some great acting and an approach to the story that finds its heart in all the right places, this film is a triumph in more ways than one with only a few dull and boring sections bringing the film down to mediocre levels. I highly recommend this to anyone that wants to be transported back to the days when Disney’s movie magic was at its height, so if that’s something you feel like you need back in your life (and I know you do), then do yourself a favor and go see this film ASAP. Maybe find a theater still playing The Jungle Book and make that shit a double feature. You won’t be disappointed.