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>>> All fired up over Pete’s Dragon

PETE’S DRAGON (David Lowery) 102 minutes. Opens Friday (August 12). See showtimes. Rating: NNNNN


Pete’s Dragon wrecked me.

All on its own, David Lowery’s reworking of a forgotten Disney property justifies that studio’s recent pol-icy of remaking every title in its vaults. Most of those films – Maleficent, Cinderella, The Jungle Book – have simply restaged their animated predecessors scene for scene, assuming that’s all that audiences want. (And they’re not wrong: each of those movies has grossed hundreds of millions of dollars.)

But in Pete’s Dragon, Lowery does something different. He and co-writer Toby Halbrooks throw out virtually everything from its 1977 predecessor except the central relationship between a child and a friendly monster, and build something absolutely wonderful on top of it.

In this version, the bond between 11-year-old Pete (Oakes Fegley) and the giant dragon he names Elliot was forged in trauma: six years ago, Elliot rescued an orphaned Pete from a car wreck, and the two have been living wild in the forest outside the small town of Millhaven ever since. 

When park ranger Grace Meacham (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her boyfriend’s daughter Natalie (Oona Laurence) discover Pete in the woods, he’s reintroduced to society – and forcibly separated from Elliot. Pete’s stories of a dragon friend are dismissed by everyone in Millhaven – everyone, that is, except Grace’s father (Robert Redford) and headstrong logger Gavin (Karl Urban), who’s also glimpsed Elliot and is determined to capture the beast.

The plot may be familiar, but the execution is revolutionary. Lowery, whose other credits include writing and directing the indie romance Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and editing Shane Carruth’s rapturous Upstream Color, frames the story as conflicting dynamics of unconditional love – between parents and children, between siblings, and ultimately between a child and his pet… though it’s never clear whether Elliot sees himself as Pete’s pet or Pete’s owner, which is the beauty of it.

Pete’s Dragon is a work of delicacy and joy and profound empathy, a film made by a corporation for a mass audience that somehow manages to be lyrical. Against all odds, it’s exquisite.

normw@nowtoronto.com | @normwilner

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