CAPSULE: Pete's Dragon (2016, Dir. David Lowery)

When it comes to Disney's Pete's Dragon I feel like should be whinging, a lot, to anyone who'll listen. As a cultural product, it is basically a sinkhole of in the fabric of cinema, eaten away by a roster of my pet hates: the rehashing of old properties, the assimilation of promising indie directors into the corporate creative conglomerate, the sentimentalisation of the childhood experience and the wet morass of unabashed paint-by-numbers emotional manipulation.

You know there's a but coming though, no?

But...

Despite its barely disguised heartstring-tugging formula, Pete's Dragon had me choked up. I'm going to stop short of labeling the film magical, but (another but) David Lowery, swallowed by Disney after his well received Sundance debut, Ain't Them Bodies Saints, latches into the essence of '80s kid adventure films without going wholesale homage (a la 'Stranger Things') and he hits a long-dormant pleasure receptor.

On the rehash score, Lowery and his regular writing team have stripped the source material of its hoke. The disturbingly catchy songs are gone. It is no longer set in a town with a name that offers a serviceable standin for Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious (Passamaquoddy, for those who remember/can't forget), and there is little left of Mickey Rooney's salty sea-doggery. In fact, the cast, which includes Bryce Dallas Howard and Wes Bentley, play the whole thing straight from end to end, with modern-edged wholesome family styling.

A polished CGI Eliot (the dragon) replaces the hand-drawn bumpkinny thing of the 1977 version and though Lowery has opted for a pet dog demeanor, personality has remained a priority. The Old Yeller angles this lays bare are used to eye-welling effect, and dovetail neatly into the tried and true family/belonging themeing that is so often Disney's stock in trade.

In another age (my childhood) Pete's Dragon would have been a surefire classic, or at least on the level of the higher tier Spielberg Presents efforts. Our more cynical times will probably see it sink into the background pretty quickly, crowded out by more flashily paced productions.

Here's hoping Lowery's family pitched nostalgia manages to cut through and make Americana great again.

★★★★

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