Pete's Dragon (remake)

[Mark S.]

Originally Posted by oeccscclhjhn

Respectable showing in my top 20. They (Disney) seemed to give Lowery a lot of leeway to make this movie his, which is glaringly noticeable with the almost total lack of subliminal and blatant references to the issue(s) of the day.

The movie is definitely NOT just a rehash of the original. There is an orphan named Pete who is raised by a dragon called Elliott. There the similarities end.

The movie is beautifully filmed. Shot in New Zealand, this is another movie that really showcases the stunning natural beauty of that country. If The Lord of the Rings movies and this movie don't make you want to at least visit New Zealand some day, there must be a black vacuum or ghost of Scrooge somewhere in your heart.

The actors are great. The kids actors too, which is often a failing in these movies. Robert Redford is the stand-out. But hey, it's Robert Redford. What do you expect?

The movie has moments of real peril but not real scares. If your kids can sit through Disney's Treasure Island, they can sit through this with no problem. The movie never devolves into saccharine sweetness. As an adult, I often roll my eyes in these types of movies. I did not in this one.

That said, the movie is still lacking something. The movie could have spent more time exploring the adult characters, and Pete's reconnection with the human world seemed a bit rushed.

So in the end I enjoyed everything onscreen. It's a good movie. But to be a great movie, I think it needed another twenty minutes of story to fill in some gaps and deepen the characters.

A good movie? Yes. Destined to be a classic? Probably not.

[oeccscclhjhn]

Originally Posted by Mark S.

The movie is beautifully filmed

That's all on Lowery. He was the editor to Upstream Color (2013), I enjoyed Listen Up Philip (2014), and will see Ain't Them Bodies Saints (2013) (which gets compared to Terrence Malick, so it's no coincidence with respect to his influence in this Pete's Dragon) after I pick it up from the library tomorrow. The muppetness of the dragon I chalk up to being it's MacGuffin - the reason you're watching it anyway. There are many moments where you can forget you're at a Disney film, which I look at being a good thing. Many will take their kids to this and come away with a liked it but maybe I didn't like it feeling - and that's fine, and that's what I love about it.

[oeccscclhjhn]

On my recommendation, my wife went to see this with her friends and loved it. Last week she said they went to see Suicide Squad and said it sucked. Told her if she had asked me I would have told her to stay away - which led to her asking what should I see then?