Pete’s Drag­on

With its colour­ful fusion of ani­ma­tion and live-action, 2016’s Pete’s Drag­on ini­tial­ly feels a lot like 1977’s Pete’s Drag­on, a film old­er view­ers are like­ly to have faint but fond mem­o­ries of. But giv­en that the lat­ter is actu­al­ly a har­row­ing musi­cal about child abuse (with ter­ri­ble songs to boot) which failed to repeat the trick Mary Pop­pins worked to such spell­bind­ing effect, it’s a good job this remake is not espe­cial­ly faith­ful. Because while the orig­i­nal boast­ed Mick­ey Rooney dressed as Cap­tain Bird­s­eye, this high-fly­ing adven­ture from writer/​director David Low­ery has an unusu­al charm all of its own.

Set main­ly in a dense for­est some­where in America’s pic­turesque Pacif­ic North­west region, the film tells the sto­ry of a young boy (Oakes Feg­ley) who, after becom­ing lost in the woods fol­low­ing a trag­ic fam­i­ly acci­dent, befriends an inquis­i­tive emer­ald drag­on. Years lat­er we find Pete and Elliot (as he names his fur­ry, fire-breath­ing pal) liv­ing the good life, per­fect­ly in sync with their nat­ur­al envi­ron­ment. They spend their days soar­ing high above the trees, chas­ing clouds and dreams, and at night they nes­tle down togeth­er beneath a mag­nif­i­cent tree from which they plan the next day’s adven­ture. But this bliss­ful fer­al exis­tence is des­tined not to last.

In a near­by log­ging town, a group of kids gath­ers intent­ly around a local wood-carv­er named Mr Meacham (Robert Red­ford) to hear tall tales of strange crea­tures lurk­ing among the pines. He even claims to have encoun­tered one of the beasts some years ago, much to the children’s wide-eyed won­der­ment. Could there real­ly be such things as drag­ons? Not every­one is con­vinced, name­ly Meacham’s park ranger daugh­ter, Grace (Bryce Dal­las Howard), who has always appre­ci­at­ed the enchant­i­ng mys­tery of nature but, cru­cial­ly, only believes in what she can see.

See­ing and believ­ing are key to this sto­ry, and to that end it is one of the less con­spic­u­ous alter­ations that has the biggest impact. In this ver­sion, Elliot has the abil­i­ty to lit­er­al­ly hide him­self in plain view mean­ing every­one, not just Pete, can see him – but only if they are will­ing to accept that he is real. It’s a sim­ple but effec­tive nar­ra­tive device because it cre­ates a sit­u­a­tion where the adult char­ac­ters, upon dis­cov­er­ing Pete seem­ing­ly alone in the for­est, find them­selves unable to explain how a small child could have sur­vived out there for so long. Even­tu­al­ly, when it dawns on Grace that Pete’s friend may not be imag­i­nary after all, she recalls a time in her own life when the line between real­i­ty and fan­ta­sy was a lot more blurred. And she starts to believe again.

Pete’s Drag­on is not sim­ply a film about the fleet­ing joys of child­hood, but an exhil­a­rat­ing, uplift­ing ode to fam­i­ly and friend­ship that’s filled with moments of daz­zling CG spec­ta­cle and old-school movie mag­ic. Giv­en that Dis­ney is cur­rent­ly in the process of eat­ing itself, devel­op­ing major updates of every­thing from Dum­bo to Aladdin, this is a might­i­ly impres­sive, pos­i­tive state­ment of intent from a stu­dio that will always be syn­ony­mous with har­ness­ing the pow­er of imagination.