My mom, when she was working her way through nursing school, spent time as a video store clerk for an independent video store. On weekends, she could bring unrented videos home for us to watch the next day, and I got to see a lot of live action Disney movies that way. Most of them weren’t terrible memorable, but they did include the original Pete’s Dragon. About all I remember about that one is a boy named Pete had a friend in the form of a dragon named Elliot. Elliot was invisible to everyone else and appeared in the form of a standard Disney 2D animated character. Really, there wasn’t a whole lot that was all that memorable about the movie.
That just makes it a good choice for a remake, truth be told, and there was one in 2016 with a CGI Elliot.
The movie opens with five year old Pete on a road trip with his parents. The car ends up flipping over, killing the boy’s parents (offscreen) while Pete crawls out, saving a favorite book and starting to wander off. He’s soon found by a large, fuzzy green dragon that, thankfully, doesn’t want to eat him. Pete names the dragon “Elliot” after the main character from the book, and the two go off to live together. Six years later, and the pair are still there.
However, the forest where Pete and Elliot call home is a bit under siege. Loggers are getting closer, and Elliot spots a park ranger (Bryce Dallas Howard) that he seems to form a bond with. When he plays a bit with a girl his age, the daughter of a responsible lumber mill owner (Wes Bentley). And while Bentley’s Jack is responsible and believes in sustainable logging, engaged as he is to Howard’s Grace, his less responsible brother Gavin (Karl Urban at his most Urban-ish) is another story. Gavin is the film’s villain, and truth be told, he’s not so much evil or wrong as someone who doesn’t think things through and looks for short cuts, making him more lazy than bad.
Pete, now, needs to decide if he should stay with Elliot or join the nearby human society. Since Gavin sees Elliot as a potential source of…something since he isn’t completely sure.
I actually really liked this one and wasn’t expecting to. But for one thing, this movie is full of thoughtful performances from the entire main cast–including Robert Redford as Howard’s father, giving the movie a bit of folksy authenticity. It’s also a very lush-looking film, taking advantage of what looks like a Pacific Northwest setting to show off some wonderful shots of nature. This is a very green film, and not just because that’s Elliot’s color. No, there’s greenery everywhere, blurring the boundary between nature and civilization in many places.
But then there’s Elliot, and he’s actually a rather delightful character. He’s easily the least frightening dragon to be seen in quite some time, with a bit of a camouflage power, and a face that looks more like a friendly dog or a house cat. This is a dragon that takes a moment to chase his own tail and scares away predators looking to make a meal out of young Pete without even trying. He’s more likely to expel snot with a sneeze than breathe fire and is more clumsy and playful than dangerous, and because of the kind of movie this is, human characters all seem to realize that by simple observation. So when even Gavin learns a lesson and ends the movie as a better person (probably), the end result is a sweet movie about a boy and his dragon. Given how forgettable and probably mediocre the original was, I’d say this one remake done right.
Grade: A-
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