PETE’S DRAGON – Review

Disney’s quest to remake their beloved classics has been successful so far with MALIFICENT, CINDERELLA and especially JUNGLE BOOK. So what happens when Disney revives one of their more lackluster works? The 1977 PETE’S DRAGON has never been considered a Disney standard and hasn’t aged well, but it still endures as a nostalgic kick for those of us who saw it as kids when it was new. The lame new PETE’S DRAGON jettisons all of the daffy details that made the original memorable; the turn-of-the-century setting, the cruel foster home straight out of Oliver Twist, the scenic Maine lighthouses, the wild-eyed Mickey Rooney drunkenly belting out dopey songs at the tavern – and replaces them with the blandest, most generic elements and characters imaginable. The result plays like bottom-drawer Spielberg, a family movie that might delight 6-year-olds with a lap full of popcorn but will bore everyone else.

This PETE’S DRAGON introduces Pete as a 5-year old in the backseat of his parent’s car somewhere near a Pacific Northwest forest. Since I didn’t recognize the actors playing mom and dad, I had a feeling they were going to die then and there, and sure enough a deer darts out and the vehicle flips over instantly killing the toddler’s folks (Disney’s remake of BAMBI should begin with this scene!). Little Pete emerges without a scratch and steps into the furry green paws of nearby Elliott, a dragon apparently as tame as he is huge. Jump ahead six years and forest ranger Grace (Bryce Howard), while marking tree lines for the local timber industry, stumbles upon Pete, now a wild child and takes him to her home. There she lives with stepdaughter Natalie (Oona Laurence), fiancée Jack (Wes Bently), owner of the local sawmill, and father Meacham (Robert Redford), a twinkly-eyed old dullard who claims to know all about that dragon in the nearby forest. Pete soon misses his fire-breathing friend but when Grace takes him back to the forest to be reunited, Jack’s mildly nefarious lumberjack brother Gavin (Karl Urban) is there with his tranquilizer gun to take down and capture Elliott.

Director David Lowery’s ALL THEM BODIES SAINTS was a lyrical outlaw romance from 2013, but PETE’S DRAGON is a major step backward, quality-wise. One problem with PETE’S DRAGON is that everyone is so nice and pleasant and bland and boring. The best they can come up with as a villain is Karl Urban as the logger who captures Elliott with some vague plans for the critter (“it’s my dragon now!”), but he isn’t much of an antagonist, displaying little malice while no one ever seems in much real peril.

While PETE’S DRAGON ’77 was a musical with costar Helen Reddy busting out peppy showtunes, the remake keeps the songs on the soundtrack – but there are so many of them – awful indie rock tunes, several of which are played in cars pointlessly taking characters from one location to another. This causes PETE’S DRAGON to take forever to get going and the film feels padded at just 95 minutes. The CGI effects are routine, and while Elliot’s dog-like design makes nice reference to the ‘77 cartoon (but without that tuft of purple hair), he’s given little personality and the brief bonding between boy and dragon is perfunctory.  This all leads up to a supposedly tearful farewell between boy and dragon but there’s no emotional engagement. Oakes Fegley has a really cool name but his Pete is a weak characterization especially so soon after Neel Sethi’s similar Mowgli in JUNGLE BOOK. Bryce Howard has that weepy gazing-in-wonder-at-a-green-screen shtick down while Robert Redford lazily delivers a string of homilies and platitudes that made me miss Mickey Rooney’s inebriated eye-rolling.  PETE’S DRAGON sinks under the weight of all its well-meaning but half-baked elements. Go watch HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON again instead.

1 ½ of 5 Stars