Dragon the line

Throughout history, the idea of dragons has made for potent enough tropes to be used to underscore nearly any theme a writer might have wanted to convey, a truism equally valid in modern pop cultural history.

The beasts can be seen as the scourge of the earth (The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug); the potential turning point in an age-old battle for power (Game of Thrones); a fearsome, terrifying wendigo (Dragonslayer); or they can be the gentle, magic expression of childhood innocence (How to Train Your Dragon), a misunderstood behemoth who adores kids and only wants to be cared about in kind (for personal reasons we will not be including "Puff the Magic Dragon" in this discussion, so don't even ask).

Depending on what you need them for, they can either be towering, lizardlike, and flame throwing; or cute, cuddly and harmless. Being that Pete's Dragon is a Disney film -- remaking and updating their own 1977 original -- and the dragon in question isn't covered in armorlike scales but soft, luminescent fur, rest assured we're talking about the latter interpretation.

Our dragon is dubbed Elliot by a little boy named Pete (Levi Alexander), whom the beast finds the night his parents have died in a bad car wreck. Lonely himself, as he has lost his own dragon family to the far north of the woods where he's staying, Elliot takes the boy in and the two embark on a wonderful adventurous life together. As the film begins in earnest, some six years have passed, and the now 10-year-old Pete (Oakes Fegley), wearing rags for clothes, his skin caked with dirt, and sporting an inexplicably quaffed Shaun Cassidy hair bounce, has formed a perfect alliance with his dragon friend, running all over the forest, engaging the other woodland animals (pointedly the film never addresses what Pete and Elliot eat during this sojourn together), and sleeping curled up next to him in their hideaway cave deep in the woods.

Naturally, this blissful interlude is disrupted by the crooked, greedy claw of humankind. A logging outfit, lead by the insensitive Gavin (Karl Urban), only slightly held in check by his far more gentle brother Jack (Wes Bentley) and Jack's sweet-faced park ranger girlfriend Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), starts digging ever deeper in the woods to hack trees down for the nearby sawmill, which disrupts the quiet life Pete and Elliot have enjoyed. Spotted by Jack's daughter, Natalie (Oona Laurence) one morning, Pete is eventually captured and taken to a nearby hospital, to Elliot's consternation.

As Pete is taken in by the kindly Grace and Jack, and befriended by Natalie, he begins to form his own human bonds, even as Elliot finally tracks him down. In one of the film's more wrenching moments, Elliot stares through the window as Jack reads a book to the family that Pete used to read to him when it was just the two of them huddled in a cave together. But before this falls completely into "Puff" territory -- a mercy much appreciated by this critic -- the Disney-adventure apparatus cranks into high gear, and various chases involving Gavin, the cops, and an unspecified squadron of helicopters ensue, ultimately resulting in everyone learning important lessons about family, magic, and the significance of staying with your own kind.

As always, Disney is forever trying to craft its pet Magic-of-Youth narrative, wherein only those with open hearts -- such as innocent children, or kindly grandfather types (here represented by Robert Redford, who plays Grace's father) -- are truly capable of receiving the magical glory of the natural world. It's not enough that Elliot is anything but fearsome looking (after much deliberation, I determined he's sort of a cross between a winged puma, and Scooby Doo in need of serious dental intervention), he also has to have the loyalty of a Labrador, and the sad wisdom of the Giving Tree.

Still, the film isn't stricken with the same sort of loaded cynicism on display in much of Disney's more recent work. Based loosely on the original film, the plot harks back to a kind of simpler time, with far fewer entanglements and extraneous story details. As much as I might find trifling fault with its execution (plot holes, can we just say, are plentiful), it doesn't really aspire to be anything it's not: It's a boy-and-his-dog tale writ fanciful. As a critic, there certainly exists enough questionable craft to cast it aside, but as a father, I would have to grudgingly admit, my daughter would probably greatly enjoy it. I'm also not one to wax on topical themes, generally speaking, but the film's core message -- avoid demonizing those creatures (or races, or creeds) we do not at first understand -- does seem more than a little relevant in the current political climate.

MovieStyle on 08/12/2016