Review of Pete's Dragon (2016) by Jesse O — 04 Dec 2016

I don't know why I feel compelled to do this, but I guess I should give some backstory on my relationship with Disney throughout the years. You know how little kids grow up and all they want to do is go to Disneyland.

And this even applies to adults as well, but I've never been one of those people. Of course I've loved Disney movies from my youth, The Lion King used to be one of my favorite childhood movies, and even to this day I've loved Disney movies (from Pixar).

But, honestly, lately I've been really turned off by Disney as a corporation. It's just the fact that they want to own everything under the sun and monetize absolutely everything they can. They bought out Pixar, they bought out Marvel Comics, they bought out Lucasarts and with it the rights to Star Wars films.

Basically, if it exists, then Disney probably owns it. And it's getting to the point where they just come across like an evil corporation putting on the facade of doing this for the magical moments that families share together when they watch one of their movies or buy some of their merchandise or go to one of their theme parks.

Enough is enough. I'll give them credit though, Disney is really good at hiding its greed by actually having people with real talent produce, write and make their films. They could very easily be lazy and hire the worst possible people to make their movies, but they don't.

So people are fooled into thinking they're in it for the art. I suppose that rant is really my way of disguising that I may not have much to say about Pete's Dragon. And this is coming from someone who actually enjoyed it.

While I gave it the same rating as the live-action Jungle Book, I'd say that I definitely enjoyed this movie far more than Jungle Book. JB only got the rating it did because its CG effects were absolutely fantastic and I enjoyed some elements of the story.

As a whole, if I had to be honest, I can't say I really enjoyed The Jungle Book, but it had enough elements that I thought were great on the technical side and that really pushed it over the edge to three stars.

One of the many problems that I had with Jungle Book is the fact that they, very forcefully, try to build this connection between the Mowgli, Baloo and Bagheera. And I just didn't get a sense that these three where anything more to each other than just acquaintances who, somewhat, cared for each other.

The biggest change in Pete's Dragon is, obviously, the fact that they do a fantastic job at creating an emotional connection between Pete and Elliot, the dragon. The fact that Pete has, pretty much, been raised by the dragon so, therefore, the dragon is the only family Pete has known or grown up with at least.

Really, almost instantly, we're not 5 minutes into the movie before Elliot's first appearance, and already him and Peter have a better relationship than the characters did in Jungle Book. The second big difference between this and the Jungle Book is that the kid at the center of it all, Oakes Fegley, is a superior actor to Neel Sethi, who played Mowgli, and was, objectively, terrible at the role.

Oakes is so good in this movie and so natural in pretty much everything he does, it's kinda surprising that, as far as I know, this is his first major role in any film. He's obviously appeared in films and television series but, I'm assuming, the bits he played were minor.

It's obvious that he's not as good as, say, a Leonardo DiCaprio, but that was unrealistic to expect. He's a freaking kid, but he's damn good and his relationship with Elliot is a strong one.

One of the problems I had with the movie, however, is that, and I don't even know how to describe it, is the fact that it just sort of came and went. And that's not really even describing it, but I felt that they just did the simplest story they could have told.

And I don't mean that the story should have been more complex, but I just felt there was something missing to the story. It pretty much hits every note you would expect. And it's entertaining to watch, yes, but it's not really more than just entertaining.

It doesn't really go any deeper than just being entertaining. And, really, with the fact that this is a Disney movie aimed at families, then I'm certain that this was the desired result. Elliot's animation isn't as strong as the incredible CG in the Jungle Book, but the character is still a good one and he's, really, the emotional core of the film.

Cast is strong, no complaints there. Though the "villain" of the film wasn't a good one. I mean that in the sense that Gavin isn't really given motivation to be hunting Elliot down. He's just doing it because he can.

It's just done so the movie can have some conflict on top of looking at Pete's relationship with Elliot. The fact that no motivation for Gavin's actions are given is proof positive that they just wanted a bit of conflict.

That's about it, though, I don't have much else to say about this movie. It's good and it'll play perfectly for families, but it's not a great movie by any means. If this hits Netflix in the near future , then give it a shot.

Solid movie at best.