Review: Pete’s Dragon

Pete’s Dragon (PG)

USA 2016 103 mins Dir: David Lowery Cast: Bryce Dallas Howard, Robert Redford, Oakes Fegley, Karl Urban, Wes Bentley, Oona Laurence

Disney’s ongoing strategy of converting their animated back catalogue into live-action movies has so far centred on adaptations of their most beloved hits. Sleeping Beauty became Maleficent starring Angelina Jolie, Cinderella got a lavish new paint-job courtesy of Kenneth Branagh and, earlier this year, Iron Man filmmaker Jon Favreau transformed The Jungle Book into a wondrous new experience.

It’s a risky approach, one that threatens to mess with viewers’ memories of timeless Disney hits, although it has so far paid massive box office dividends. Yet one has to question why Disney haven’t yet plundered one of their lesser-known efforts, one not only ripe for reinvention but which practically demands it. Enter Pete’s Dragon, director David Lowery’s live-action take on the forgotten 1977 musical that mixed animation with a purple-haired, cartoon fire-breather in the manner of Bedknobs and Broomsticks.

It’s hardly one of Disney’s most celebrated efforts, so immediately Lowery’s film threatens to trample over fewer cherished memories. That the remake is itself tremendous, wondrous entertainment further seals the deal: beautifully acted and with a genuine CGI showstopper in the form of the eponymous dragon, it’s one of summer 2016’s most wide-eyed surprises.

Indie neo-Western Ain’t Them Bodies Saints demonstrated Lowery’s cast-iron grip on mood and the same sense of bucolic, arboreal atmosphere pervades Pete’s Dragon. Set in the Pacific Northwest (the lush forests of New Zealand acting as a majestic stand-in), we open on an uncompromising moment of tragedy in 1977 as young child Pete is involved in a car crash that kills his parents. Pursued by wolves into the foreboding forest, he is then approached – in a contrasting moment of spine-tingling, tear-prickling joy – by the eponymous dragon whom he dubs ‘Elliot’ off the basis of his cherished storybook.

That we get to see the magical creation so early on and in such full-bodied detail is not only a sign of Lowery’s confidence in his effects team (Peter Jackson’s WETA Digital geniuses, please stand up). It also nails the movie’s Spielbergian approach to the mast, one that presents the fantastical in absolutely matter-of-fact terms whilst unashamedly getting us to invest in that awed sense of make-believe.

Six years later in 1983, the older Pete (impressive newcomer Oakes Fegley) now lives a feral, fun-filled existence with his winged friend, but their paradise sees the encroaching presence of Millhaven locals on their doorstep, both benevolent and threatening. In the former camp is kindly park ranger Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), whose fiance is lumber mill owner Jack (Wes Bentley) and whose wood-carver father (Robert Redford, also our occasional narrator) once claims to have seen the dragon as a boy. When Grace’s stepdaughter Natalie (Oona Laurence) stumbles across Pete in the forest, their friendship is put to the test, particularly when Jack’s brother Gavin (Karl Urban) gets wind of a potential dragon trophy that could bring him his fortune. (The latter point is where the movie could perhaps have spent a little more time – Gavin’s antagonism feels somewhat underdeveloped.)

Any movie that puts its CGI title character front and centre so early on must of course have the requisite level of effects to convince us, and there’s no denying Elliot is a superb creation. With his furry coat, huge expressive eyes and array of guttural growls, the loveable monster makes for an intriguing dog-like contrast to the feline creation seen in DreamWorks’ How to Train Your Dragon movies (to which this owes a clear debt).

Yet there is real human soul coursing through the veins of Lowery’s movie, the terrific Fegley really selling us on this fantastical friendship as two lonely souls find themselves meeting in the middle (Pete pining for a new family; Elliot seemingly for the rest of his kind, who could potentially be lurking beyond that elusive North Star). Lowery’s understated approach is brilliant for quietly teasing out these profound themes, another being the heartfelt way in which Elliot’s hushed mythology has infused the lives of both the believers and non-believers in the town, eventually bonding them together in unexpected ways.

Devoid of cynical pop-culture references (the eighties setting thankfully precludes that, while drawing further attention to the movie’s genre-defining inspirations) and shot through in lush golden and verdant hues by cinematographer Bojan Bazelli, one can practically taste the dew in the air. It’s a movie that often isn’t afraid to drop the dialogue altogether (truly a thing of wonder in today’s frenetic age), the early sequences between Pete and Elliot breathless in their emphasis on physical rhythms. And when the characters do speak the warmth comes emanating through, whether it’s Dallas Howard’s understated charm (the actress put to much better use here than in Jurassic World) or Redford’s sing-song rhythms that are as in-tune with the landscape as the lilting soundtrack, one mixing Bonnie Prince Billy covers with a soaringly gorgeous score by Daniel Hart.

It is in short everything a summer movie should be, one infused with a palpable sense of magic as opposed to the ringing, desolate sound of box office returns. Resounding to rich themes of family, friendship and that strange bond between reality and imagination, Pete’s Dragon is a triumph.