To Remake Or Not To Remake..."Pete's Dragon"

Pete's Dragon (2016)

Rated PG

Starring Oakes Fegley, Bryce Dallas Howard, Robert Redford, Oona Laurence, Wes Bentley, Karl Urban,

Directed by David Lowery

The Story:

Pete (Fegley) becomes orphaned and is raised in the wild Pacific Northwest by a dragon he calls Elliot. As the years pass, he is discovered by a girl (Laurence) and her mom (Howard), the local forest ranger. The only real problem, Gavin (Urban) has learned that the forest has a dragon in it, and he's decided it would fetch him a fortune.

Well, Disney swung for the fences with this one, making a live action adaptation of a late 70s hybrid live action/animated feature.

The good thing, it's better than the original, unless you happen to adore that movie, then it's quite likely you might hate this one.

Hard to say, I've seen differing opinions all over the internet.

One lady was reduced to tears because of the changes between films.

Yikes.

Some people need to get out more.

:)

Personally, I was pleased that the musical numbers were gone, and so too the abusive foster parents that Pete had to endure growing up.

The problem, for me, that has plagued most of these live action remakes, is that they're still just average at the end.

Disney has taken beloved animated classics, or in this case, an older movie (heheheh...) and just put a new coat of paint on it and pushed it out the door.

Maleficent at least had the decency to tell an entirely new story, and it remains the benchmark of quality for these films.

The rest have come across as average, which for other studios might be okay, but when this is Disney putting out a Disney movie, it seems like we should expect a little bit more, and I'm still just not seeing it.

Again, there's nothing wrong with the film on its own merits, it simply exists.

Plus, like most movies, they severely underutilized Karl Urban and so his villainous turn is half-hearted, at best.

Perhaps I'm jaded because How To Train Your Dragon has already taken the story of a boy and his dragon and raised the bar so well, this one just didn't have a chance.

Final Grade:  C