PETE'S DRAGON *1/2
David Lowery
2016
IDEA: Stranded after his parents are killed in a car accident, Pete finds protection and companionship in Elliot, a friendly dragon who lives in the woods. Their peaceful existence, however, is threatened by the arrival of a park ranger and a fleet of rapacious loggers.
BLURB: In its most lyrical moments, Pete’s Dragon aspires to the kind of earthy, poignant poetry of canonical boy-and-his-pet movies. For the rest of the time, which is a dispiriting majority, David Lowery’s loose remake lazily employs all the kids’ film clichés that Disney has made its bread and butter. The simplistic nature of the story is not by itself the issue: for a little while, Lowery seems to have tapped into the appropriate fable-like tone, which operates on straightforwardly primal storytelling and easy-to-read archetypes invested with the resonance of tradition. His prologue, largely nonverbal, promises economical image-making in an understated emotional register. Then it falls apart. The obligatory run-and-play scene between boy and dragon, placed right at the beginning, is a rousing sequence that nevertheless serves as a premature crescendo to a narrative that hasn’t even occurred. It is followed by an increasingly slapdash string of unimaginative dramatic confrontations and pursuits, each one culminating in a similar climax en route to the predetermined – and saccharine – resolution. Daniel Hart’s majestic score, at least, suggests the awe the film consistently fumbles to produce, but even its sweeping strings begin to sound as mawkish as the scenes they accompany. When Pete’s Dragon finally amounts to little more than a rote reiteration of the sanctity of the traditional family unit, that initial artistry supplied by Lowery feels like either the vestiges of a squandered opportunity or a hint at another film that would better serve his talents.
