How entertaining? ★★☆☆☆
Thought provoking? ★☆☆☆☆ 12 August 2016
A movie review of PETE’S DRAGON. |
YouTube review:
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“Just because you don’t see something, does not mean it’s not there,” Meacham (Robert Redford)
An odd choice for director David Lowery. After his lovers on the run period thriller, AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS, a remake of a 1970s Disney film would not be something one would have guessed. Opening on a tragic car crash, where the lead boy’s parents are killed, hope was elevated that he had brought his pseudo-Terrence Malick filmmaking chops to a family blockbuster. That sense of sadness and loss is jettisoned for narrative painting by numbers. After the initially gripping start, where are the revelations out of left field? The most heinous crime committed by any storyteller.
An odd choice for director David Lowery. After his lovers on the run period thriller, AIN’T THEM BODIES SAINTS, a remake of a 1970s Disney film would not be something one would have guessed. Opening on a tragic car crash, where the lead boy’s parents are killed, hope was elevated that he had brought his pseudo-Terrence Malick filmmaking chops to a family blockbuster. That sense of sadness and loss is jettisoned for narrative painting by numbers. After the initially gripping start, where are the revelations out of left field? The most heinous crime committed by any storyteller.
Like the recent JUNGLE BOOK live action adaptation, the musical elements of the 1977 version are abandoned. What is retained is a boy’s own adventure about a kid and his dragon Elliot. The need for a new nuclear family to fill the void in Pete (Oakes Fegley) is the obvious emotional thrust, which ends up being far too sentimental; made worse by the cementing of love within days and barely any time spent together. Yes, PETE’S DRAGON has an old-fashioned, 1980s-style, of simple unadorned storytelling, but it also has a modern cowardice of not willing to end on a slightly melancholy note as the original did.
Wandering away from the car crash into the woods, Pete is saved from a pack of hungry wolves by the resident dragon. Jump forward six years and Pete looks like the feral kid from MAD MAX 2. The two of them own the woods, until a logging company, run by brothers Jack (Wes Bentley) and Gavin (Karl Urban), turns up at their doorstep. The latter brother is particularly greedy. Will Gavin learn a valuable life lesson by the conclusion? You’ve guessed the answer.
Elliot and Pete are separated when the latter is discovered by forest warden Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), who benignly wants to find a home for our hero. Weirdly, her fiancé is Jack. Am not sure how their professions are reconciled to the extent of wanting to marry. Jack has a daughter, Natalie (Oona Laurence), of a similar age, who Pete is drawn. Some humour comes in the form of a dragon looking for his B.F.F in a town. The background scenery looks real, and striking, instead of the substandard computer generated rendering as most large-scale movies resort.
Perhaps a film just for the youngest of cinema-goes; everyone else will be a little bit bored.
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