Film Review: "Pete's Dragon" (2016).

"Some secrets are too big to keep" in Pete's Dragon. This live-action fantasy adventure film directed by David Lowery, written by Lowery and Toby Halbrooks, and based on the 1977 Disney live-action/animated musical classic of the same name written by Malcolm Marmorstein. When a mysterious ten-year-old boy claims to live in the woods with a giant green dragon, a forest ranger and an eleven-year-old set out to learn the truth about him.

In March 2013, a non-musical, dramatic remake of Disney's 1977 classic was announced with Lowery hired to direct and co-write with Halbrooks. Disney intended to rework the core story as a dramatic story, rather than a musical. It set the new work in the Pacific Northwest of the early 1980s, rather than the Northern New England of the early 1900s in the 1977 film. The filmmakers cited The Black Stallion (1979), The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness (2013), My Neighbor Totoro (1988), Spirited Away (2001), and The Witch (2015), as artistic and visual inspirations. By early February 2015, Bryce Dallas Howard, Wes Bentley, Karl Urban, Robert Redford, Isiah Whitlock Jr., John Kassir, Oakes Fegley, and Oona Laurence were cast. Casey Affleck and Michael C. Hall were originally cast before they were replaced with Bentley and Urban. At the same time, principal photography commenced and wrapped in late April. Filming took place throughout Bay of Plenty, Rotorua, Tapanui, Taupo and Wellington in New Zealand and was shot in live-action using Panavision Panaflex cameras. The dragon, Elliot, was entirely animated by Weta Digital in CGI, instead of the original hand-drawn animation.

The film stars Howard, Bentley, Urban, Redford, Whitlock Jr., Kassir, Fegley, and Laurence. Hats off to the cast, who put the effort in, but the end result remains a surprisingly sticky presentation; slow, stagnant and mysteriously void of charm and warmth.

Beautifully shot, the story, however, lacks any remarkable originality. It doesn't offer anything new and quite frankly, we have all seen this before. The film had potential to pull at your heartstrings like the original and fill your life with pure joy, but the filmmakers' pool of ideas are, unfortunately, just as empty as Disney's creativity vault. For all its wonderful production values and a game cast, somehow lacks the sense of magic that is expected from a movie of this ilk. It may engage adults who have grown up with the original, but for children, it offers very little in the way of fun. If they had a little more vision, a little more courage, it could have been something truly meaningful, instead of just another fuzzy warm journey. While it is very, very far from being the worst or most insipid thing Disney has down with these characters, it puts up a good fight to be the most dull. The script seems to operate on the assumption that if it announces and acknowledges the stale predictability of its character moments, this makes it a postmodern wink rather than a routine bit of fan-service retrieved from a warehouse.

Simon says Pete's Dragon receives:

Also, see my review for Ain't Them Bodies Saints.