A boy and his dragon

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This article was published 13/08/2016 (3701 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The original 1977 Disney film Pete’s Dragon was a blend of live action and traditional cel animation, a combo that is almost as old as film animation itself. In the 1960s, it was popularized in films such as Mary Poppins and Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and reached its apotheosis in the late ‘80s with Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

These days, of course, just about every other major Hollywood feature is a combination of live action and animation, but, if the filmmakers are doing their job properly, we barely notice the animated parts, presented as they are in photorealistic, computer-animated detail.

If nothing else, this new version of Pete’s Dragon shows how the mash-up medium has evolved, even if its storytelling has not. Freed from the artifice of the form, director David Lowery (Ain’t Them Bodies Saints) actually aims for the quality of an American folktale in telling an altered story of a five-year-old boy who finds himself alone in the remote wilds of the Pacific Northwest after his parents are killed in a car accident. Coming to young Pete’s rescue is a huge, furry dragon, whom the boy dubs Elliot, after the hero of his favourite storybook.

Six years pass and Pete (Oakes Fegley) enjoys an adventure-filled life in the wild with Elliot, who has the temperament of a playful spaniel despite being the size of a parade float. But when a lumber camp starts making inroads into Elliot’s turf, the boy finds himself drawn to the kind, maternal forest ranger, Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard). Also appealing to Pete is a girl his own age, Natalie (Oona Laurence), the daughter of Grace’s fiancé, Jack (Wes Bentley).

Pete is discovered and taken back into a world that is civilized, if not contemporary. (Lowery deliberately avoids any onscreen appearances of modern technology to achieve a quality of timelessness.) Elliot goes in search of his little buddy, and that takes the dragon into the path of Jack’s brother, Gavin (Karl Urban), a hunter who believes capturing a dragon could have a significant payoff.

Lurking around the periphery of all this is Meachum, Grace’s father, played with rumpled elder gravitas by Robert Redford. Meacham has always told stories of meeting a dragon in the forest, but everyone, including his own daughter, has always assumed he was just engaging in colourful exaggeration.

Of course, this movie is all about the colourful exaggeration. But if the film has a template, it is not the original, but rather Steven Spielberg’s ET — The Extraterrestrial, another film that facilitated child flight while plucking ruthlessly at the heartstrings.

Even Spielberg himself found it difficult to recast that particular spell earlier this summer with The BFG. But Lowery does it skilfully, with a couple of aces up his sleeve. Those would be young Fegley, a most impressive young actor, and Howard who, after Jurassic World, is proving to be the go-to heroine for this kind of movie, given her uncanny ability to fully emotionally invest while playing off invisible monsters.

randall.king@freepress.mb.caTwitter: @FreepKing