Review of Pete's Dragon (1977) by Edith N — 28 Aug 2009

Inferior Disney Nostalgia.

I am, as we know, glad that Disney includes cartoons as part of their "Fast Play" programming--as one of the things that automatically plays when you put the disc in the DVD player. I'm glad they put them on there at all. Not enough studios do that. And, of course, the cartoon we have here--Donald Duck in "Lighthouse Keeping"--is, as the name implies, nicely lighthouse-themed, in keeping with the setting of today's film. And, of course, there are a couple of previews that interest me, and there are some that don't. Par for the course. But let's get to something that Disney needs to go back to doing. On some of my old Vault Disney releases, the best releases Disney has ever done, while they didn't have Fast Track, you could select to have the cartoon play with the movie--and they played ahead of the movie as God intended. After the trailers and before the feature. There's where the cartoon belongs. I cannot fathom the thought process that puts it at the end here. I'm also confused by the five minutes of trailers after the movie.

Pete (Sean Marshall) is an orphan. He has been sold, we don't know from whom, to a family called the Gogans. (In my head, they are the Gorgons.) They paid $50 for him, plus fifty cents "legal." (Why isn't there a cent sign on the keyboard?) However, Pete is no fool and runs away as soon as he can. He is accompanied on this escape by his large, green dragon, Elliott (voiced by Charlie Callas). Together, they escape through what in my mind is always a swamp of some kind to the small fishing village of Passamaquoddy, Maine. There, they meet friendly lighthouse-keepers Nora (Helen Reddy) and her father, oddly enough called "Lampie" (Micky Rooney), who take the poor child in. While Lampie has seen Elliott, he was drunk at the time and isn't sure he can trust himself. Nora takes it as just something Pete needs to believe, because he's never had anyone else. Eventually, the Gogans come to town and pair up with snake-oil salesman Dr. Terminus (Jim Dale, who I'm pleased to say did finally work out that the "T" on the end of "Voldemort" is pronounced) and his assistant, Hoagy (Red Buttons), to capture Pete and Elliott. Not only that, but Nora's love, Paul (Cal Bartlett), is lost at sea and presumed drowned.

It's odd to think how few of these elements would make it into a children's movie these days. I mean, we'll even just start with Lampie and Hoagy staggering around drunk off their gourds together. And it's played for laughs, which you definitely won't get today. The Gogans are pretty intimidating. It's pretty scary to have the people who are supposed to take care of you being cruel and out to get you--see also [i]The Rescuers[/i] and poor Penny. (High on the list of Disney's most pathetic orphans, where Pete doesn't even make the top ten.) And there's no social services. And, let's face it, he's a slave. The word is never used, but he is. Pete had to run away, just like any other slave who wanted his freedom. The lost-at-sea fiancé wouldn't appear in a modern movie. The plot to take Elliott away from Pete, yes, but not the idea of butchering to make him into medicine. Can you imagine the fuss? Apparently, kids from the '70s didn't get scared.

This is, as I say, far from Disney's best film. Even from 1977--[i]Candleshoe[/i] and [i]The Rescuers[/i] came out in 1977. It's awfully saccharine, for starters. This is one of these movies where I'm more than a little curious to see what Tim Burton would do with it. After all, there is, as I mentioned, a lot of stuff in there that wouldn't get put in modern kids' movies. And, all right, we know everything's going to be okay, that Doc Terminus won't use Elliott's blood to live forever or whatever the various bits were supposed to do. However, in the middle, Nora gets a big song about tolerance. It's a good song, but it's kind of out of place in this setting. She also tells Pete awful early in the film that he's got a family to take care of him now. And, frankly, Elliott isn't drawn terribly well and the special effects have not entirely worn very well. The hazards of some of these things.

Actually, some of that didn't need to come up at all. The original plan was never to show Elliott at all, for him to be invisible through the whole film. An interesting conceit, certainly. And then, they came up with what I think would have worked even better, for his unveiling to come just at the very end. I assume it would be at the dramatic moment, the moment where his help is all that will save the town. Possibly it would have been at the climax of the fight with the Gogans and Dr. Terminus. Pretty much wherever you chose to stick that moment, I think it would have worked better than the twenty-odd minutes of screen time he gets now. Some of the lines are too obvious, making it too clear that he's apart from the background. It's true with most of the characters, too, but it's always most noticeable with the animated ones, whether it be in this movie or any other from the time. (Or even some movies now.) There are a lot of little things which could have been done to improve this movie. That would have been where I would have started.