‘Pete’s Dragon’ (2016) ****/*****
You can finally stop complaining that remakes never improve on the original
The movie called Pete’s Dragon that Disney put out in 1977 is pretty goofy. It’s full of corny songs, broad acting, and it exists mostly as an excuse to create slapstick gags based on what it would look like if an invisible dragon interacted with normal, unsuspecting people. If you’re worried that this new Pete’s Dragon is going to be anything like that, don’t. It hits a completely different tone and it tells a completely different story. It’s much more of a family film than just a kid’s film, and it’s a good one to boot.
This time around Pete (Oakes Fegley) is a five-year-old who survives a car wreck deep in the wilderness that kills both of his parents, and survives the next six years in the woods thanks to the help of a giant, friendly, intelligent-but-non-verbal dragon he befriends and names Elliot. Thing’s go pretty good for Pete and Elliot — who exists as a kind of whispered about myth to the yokels in surrounding towns — until the day an encroaching logging company stumbles into their stomping grounds, Pete gets discovered, and a push and pull regarding his fate begins between a friendly forest ranger (Bryce Dallas Howard) and an ambitious logger (Karl Urban). These early stages of the film are something of a character-based drama, where questions about people who don’t really fit in and what they’re supposed to do with themselves get explored, and then once Elliot is also discovered the film turns into much more of a full-on adventure yarn. Something like Free Willy, but with magic and no Michael Jackson.
Probably the main thing that makes Pete’s Dragon a compelling film that can be enjoyed by everyone instead of it being a disposable piece of crap aimed only at the youngest and dumbest among us is that it’s directed by a talented filmmaker named David Lowery, who’s best known for making a great and much more adult film called Ain’t Them Bodies Saints. Differences in content aside, there are some lines that can be drawn between both of his movies that might turn out to be Lowery trademarks. They’re both gorgeous to look at, thanks to the way that he shoots nature, they’re both character-driven and rooted in family dynamics, and they both feature really good performances from their actors, who Lowery seems to ask quite a bit of and in turn gets quite a bit out of. It doesn’t take much more than the first five minutes of Pete’s Dragon to realize that you’re in good hands as far as the filmmaking goes. The opening scene is very soft focus, and pretty corny, and you initially think that you might be stuck watching a movie that’s going to talk down to its audience, but then that look and that tone is suddenly subverted, making you realize that the world you’ve been in was one of a warm childhood memory, and that the sudden shift has been very subtly conveyed to you solely through the use of stylistic filmmaking. It’s a comforting realization.
There’s another sequence early on where Pete and Elliot frolic through the forest that’s just great. It’s played as being a scene of pure wonder meant to establish the bond between the two characters, but on the sly it’s also establishing for us the geography of where they live and the extent of what magical stuff Elliot is capable of, which are both essential to understand once the third act rolls around. There’s an economy of storytelling there that lets you know you’re dealing with a smart filmmaker. If there’s one complaint to be made about the nuts and bolts of the production though, it would be that the dialogue is overwritten. The characters here don’t talk like real people quite so much as they talk like fairy tale archetypes. It doesn’t end up being much of a distraction, seeing as what you’re watching mostly is a fairy tale, but it lessens the impact of the more grounded human drama a little.
The acting is generally very strong, with the only weak point being that Fegley is a little bit raw as Pete. He’s fine — better than most child actors — and strong enough to rest a movie on, but last year Jacob Tremblay showed us just how great a preternaturally talented child actor could be in a role like this with Room, and comparatively Fegley doesn’t measure up. He’s mostly good, but not memorable. Oona Laurence plays the young girl who first discovers Pete living out in the forest, and she might actually be one of those preternaturally talented actors. She’s got a maturity that seems beyond her age, and seeing as she’s quite striking and has the sort of parents who named her Oona, one can imagine that she’s got all of the tools necessary to build a real career in Hollywood going forward. All of the non-child performances are great. Howard stands out because she has by far the biggest adult role (and she’s got such an ethereal quality that radiates off of her and works well for this film), but it should be noted that Urban and Robert Redford give really memorable supporting performances as well. Redford is turning all of his charm on while playing an old kook, and Urban is able to add quite a bit of soul to a character who would otherwise have come off as a villain. Also, somehow Wes Bentley got cast as Howard’s boyfriend, and he’s fine, I guess? Mostly he just disappears into the furniture.
All of the beautiful cinematography, strong acting, and human drama in the world wouldn’t be enough to actually get kids to like this movie unless there was also some fun involved though, and that’s where the dragon comes in. Elliot is charming and lovable, and he’s going to be really popular with kids if any parents actually take their kids to see this movie. Not only is the CG work done on him good enough to blend him into the live action seamlessly enough to keep things from constantly looking fake and distracting, but his animators and designers also did a really great job of putting personality into his facial expressions and adding a degree of charming oafishness to the way he moves. He’s the big slobbery dog that follows you around everywhere that pretty much every kid wished they had when they were growing up, but giant and green and able to turn invisible and fly — and if that’s not fun enough for you, he also has a tendency to sneeze shotgun blasts of dragon snot all over people when he meets them. Just because a movie is good enough for adults to enjoy doesn’t mean that it can’t have a little bathroom humor in it as well. Pete’s Dragon pretty much does it all.
