SECUNDA – Pete’s Dragon is a cute but not sickeningly sweet story about a young boy and his unconventional best friend.
After losing his parents in a car accident when he was a five-years-old toddler, Pete is raised by a friendly dragon in the woods for nearly six years.
Loosely based on a mixed live action and animation Disney musical which came to our screens in 1977, this reworking of the classical “Orphan finds a home” story comes with less music and better casting than the original.
Bryce Dallas-Howard, Oakes Fegley, Wes Bentley, Karl Urban, Oona Laurence and Robert Redford bring this movie to life in a sweet and dependably pleasant way.
The plot is pretty straightforward.
Six years before, Pete lost his parents in a car accident in an unnamed wooded area somewhere in the north western United States.
Pete survives, but is chased into the woods by a pack of wolves.
He is rescued by a giant, green dragon with yellow eyes and green fur, which Pete names Elliot after his favourite character, a puppy, in one of his story books.
Pete and his dragon develop a loving relationship and Pete accepts Elliot as his new father figure.
Moving on six years, Pete comes across a lumber-jacking crew and through a serious of unfortunate events, Pete is taken to a hospital and the townspeople become aware of the giant dragon living in their woods.
As with any family relationship that does not match their specific idea of what a traditional family should look like, some of the residents are extremely uncomfortable with Pete and Elliot’s relationship.
Well meaning lumberjack Jack and his park ranger girlfriend, Grace, attempt to give Pete a more traditional sense of home, and although this odes work in the end, this film makes you think about the true meaning of family and the relationships that form us into who we are.
Dark and intolerant forces conspire to remove Elliot from the area and from Pete’s life, and due to this aggravation and his inherent “otherness”, Elliot is finally forced out of town and into the mountains.
With the resilience of a young child and the kind treatment he receives from Jack and Grace, Pete does seem to grow into a well balanced young teenager, and there is a bittersweet moment when, while on a family vacation years later, they come across Elliot living among his own kind in the mountains.
David Lowry works his magic to get the most out of the characters and this retelling of a classic story will resonate well with younger audiences as well as those who fell in love with the story first time round.
Lowry does not shy away from showing the darker twists in the story line, as is evident in the fatal car crash scene that shows all the horror of such an accident in a frame by frame master piece – reminiscent of the time Disney movies meant something.
The death of Mufasa and Bambi’s mother taught a generation of children about pain, loss and grief, and Pete’s Dragon will no doubt form part of the next generations’ emotional education.
Regardless of the tragic events, this is a family friendly movie, well worth a watch and it will stay with you, rewarding your imagination and awakening your inner child every time you drive by a wooded area.
