By Jake Coyle, Film Writer
NEW YORK (AP) --After an exhausting summer buffet of set pieces, superheroes and whatever s-word you might use for "Suicide Squad," the gentle "Pete's Dragon" is a welcome palate cleanser. Where other summer movies are chest-thumping, it's quiet; where others are brashly cynical, it's sweetly sincere; where others are lacking in giant cuddly dragons, "Pete's Dragon" has one.
Few may remember the 1977 Disney original, in which a young boy's best friend was a bubbly dragon invisible to others. As part of Disney's continuing effort to remake its animated classics in live-action, "Pete's Dragon" has been confidently reborn as an earnest tale of green-winged wonder.
David Lowery, a veteran of the independent film world and the director of the lyrical crime drama "Ain't Them Bodies Saints," inherits a far bigger film. But his "Pete's Dragon" still maintains the homespun feel of an American fable. Spielberg-light, you might call it.
The film begins, in the "Bambi" tradition, in parental tragedy. Pete's family is driving through a remote Pacific Northwest forest with Pete nestled in the backseat of the station wagon, reading a children's book about a dog named Elliott. A deer sprints out and, in poetic slow-motion, the gravity of the car's interior is upended. The car flips off the road and Pete staggers from the crash.
Flashing forward six years, Pete (Oakes Fegley) is a wild 10-year-old orphan living in the woods alone except for his magical companion, the dragon Elliott. As far as CGI creatures go, Elliott is an irresistible one. Furry as a fairway, he's like an enormous emerald-green puppy. Far from the "Game of Thrones" dragon variety, he's more adept at chasing his own tail than breathing fire.
He's also the subject of local folklore, mostly as told by Robert Redford's wood-carving storyteller. But it's his forest ranger daughter Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) that first encounters Elliott and ultimately leads to the dragon's discovery.
Grace coaxes Elliott back into society and into the fold of her family. She has a daughter, Natalie (Oona Laurence) and lumber mill-running husband Jack (Wes Bentley). It's the push by a logging company – where Jack's brother, Gavin (Karl Urban) is a gun-totting lumberjack – into the forest that simultaneously begins flushing out Pete and Elliott from their home in the trees.
The lush forest (New Zealand, again, subbing for North America) reigns over "Pete's Dragon," a tale scored with soft bluegrass and exuding an environment-friendly love for the beautiful and exotic splendors of nature. When competing interests come for Elliott, they are really fighting for the soul of the forest.
There are Spielbergian gestures here of magic and family and faith, perhaps better orchestrated than Spielberg's own recent try at a Disney film, "The BFG." But it's missing a spark, a sense of danger and maybe a little humor.
The lean simplicity of "Pete's Dragon" is its greatest attribute and its weakness. It doesn't quite achieve liftoff until the film's final moments. But it does at last catch flight, finally soaring beyond its humble folksiness.
"Pete's Dragon," a Walt Disney Co. release, is rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America for "action, peril and brief language." Running time: 103 minutes. Three stars out of four.
Eleanor Adds Director Candice Vernon To Its Roster For Spots and Branded Content
Director Candice Vernon has joined production house Eleanor for U.S. representation spanning commercials and branded content. She has already wrapped several jobs at Eleanor, which waited to announce her until they had a body of work together.
Via Eleanor, Vernon made history as the first Black director on a Febreze commercial. The “Small Spaces” campaign marks a major departure from Febreze’s typical blue-and-white world. The home of the “Revolving Door” commercial is a beautiful array of bold sunset hues, African prints, and African art.
Vernon said, “I asked myself, what feels right to me? What feels new? I wanted to bring an essence of not just Black Americans but the full diaspora. I wanted to make a statement that we’re not a monolith.”
Following the success of the “Small Spaces” campaign, Febreze brought Vernon back for a comedy-infused trifecta exploring the hilarious situations that call for an air freshening hero.
Febreze Brand VP Angelica Matthews said, “About two years ago, we realized the consumers that were the most loyal to Febreze were the African American consumers. And the more we learned, the more we realized the richness that we were really missing. So we said we have to go beyond just Black casting, we need to get Black directors that truly understand the culture that truly understand how to bring authentic performances out on screen. We really looked around the industry and noticed there’s actually a shortage of African American directors who have experience doing commercials. When we all saw Candice’s reel, we could all tell the passion for the craft, passion for really trying to help us from where we are to where we’re trying to go.”
Vernon brings a unique lens to... Read More