Review: Pete's Dragon

Pete's Dragon (2D)
Cert: PG / 103 mins / Dir. David Lowery / Trailer



The cynic in me (and as regular readers will attest, that's who holds the majority-sway in my psyche) would perhaps wonder if Disney's current programme of retooling older animated content as sumptuous live-action holiday-bait means they're finally running out of ideas. But even the cynic shut the hell up less than five minutes into Pete's Dragon and just went on the ride. Because when they're making them this good, who cares?

A complete restructuring of the older movie, the 2016 version sees five-year old Pete suddenly orphaned and alone in dense woodland when he befriends the dragon he names Elliot, after a character in a storybook he has with him. For six years, the two survive as companions until their makeshift home is disrupted by deforestation/construction works. The film then follows the 11yr-old boy's rehabilitation into a civilised world he barely remembers, as well as the separation-anxiety for both Pete and Elliot, and of course the builders' reaction to an actual live dragon. Herein lies adventure...

Of course, being Disney, this film is pro-level Twee™ and is so preachy that's the screenwriters have hand-carved their own pulpit. Yet it's still thoroughly charming for all that, in a way which only The House Of Mouse can make look effortless. The wistful sunsets and easy-listening soundtrack threaten to get a little heavy-handed from time to time, but both suit the tone of the film perfectly.

Set in a nondescript time-frame (no mobiles, no laptops, little in the way of TV although the kids have got BMXs), the film lifts some of the more memorable beats from E.T. and Jurassic Park while never feeling like it's really stealing them. In fact, it seems to be the case that director David Lowery is more Spielbergian that even Spielberg himself can manage, these days. That said, there's also a dash of Predator thrown into the mix*¹, which was a nice surprise.

Pete's Dragon turns out to be everything that The BFG should have been (and The Jungle Book, come to think of it). Although in common with those films, once again the best performances come from the young lead actor and a CGI counterpart. Oakes Fegely is fantastic as young Pete, and while his role is a lot more lighthearted than Jacob Tremlay's in Room, there's a dynamic to both the character and performance which makes it comparable.

As much as I enjoyed this, I know it'll be too saccharine for some audiences. Under the normal run of things, it probably would have been for me, too, but something just clicked the first time the gurning, grunting Elliot appeared on camera.

I had smiles, I had goosebumps, and on at least one occasion I might have had something in my eye. Pete's Dragon is another great example of a magical story told with absolute sincerity, and being all the better for it.

Despite what I've said there, The BFG, and probably Disney's live-action Cinderella, too.



You could do far worse during the Summer holidays, if your padawans are pestering you to go out and do something.



It does.



It'll be the high-watermark which director David Lowery and lead actor Oakes Fegely will be judged against.
Certainly around these parts, anyway.



Nope.



There isn't.



Level 2: This movie's got that Robert Redford in it, who we saw in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, of course, playing opposite Mace Windu himself, Sam Jackson.




*¹ Not only can Elliot the dragon make himself go invisible to evade his enemies, he's also got a broken tusk like Dachande from Steve Perry's Aliens vs Predator novels (a look which was also directly referenced in AVP: Requiem, one of the only cool things about that movie). Hang on, I'm not the only person who sees an adorable green furry dragon and thinks of Predator, am I?



DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.

Review: Interstellar

Interstellar (SPOILERS …ish)
Cert: 12A / 166 mins / Dir. Christopher Nolan




You see, I'd wondered what I was missing in the trailers I'd seen for Christopher Nolan's space-epic Interstellar. People were getting very excited for this film, but try as I might, all I could think was "Okay, so Earth's dying, Mumbler McConaughey goes into space to find another home, and then what?". Because that seems like an initial setup rather than a plot in itself, and the trailers seemed to be deliberately coy with the film's USP. After watching the just-under-three-hour flick, I now understand that if the trailer had explained the level of moral and metaphysical pondering that was going to accompany the space-travel, the film's casual audience would be reduced dramatically. That's not to say that Interstellar is a brain-numbing minefield of Inception proportions, but it clearly wants to be.

After a series of crop-droughts in Earth's not-too-distant future due to irreversible atmospheric mutation, a NASA programme is developed to explore new worlds fit for human habitation. Farmer and ex-astronaut Cooper is called upon to head the culmination of the programme on what could turn out to be a one-way flight, but reconciling the continuation of the human race with losing his family is something that will haunt his journey for years to come...

With a lot of navel-gazing and a lot of star-backed docking-sequences, Interstellar seems to be reaching for the visual effects of Gravity and the philosophy of 2001, but ends up not quite achieving either*¹. Nolan's use of time-differentials (think of the dream-layers in Inception) also goes some way to muddying the waters, even if there's a sound scientific reason for it being present. The film does a fantastic job of building characters, but the plot (and backstory in particular) is left to amble along at its own pace. Luckily Nolanesque stalwart Michael Caine steps into the trousers of Captain Exposition, as an elderly academic who in a film by any other director would be played by Morgan Freeman.

The performances are solid enough, even if many of the characters' motivations seem a little hysterical at times, and the production design is great, but without being remotely revolutionary. There's the feeling that with the themes being explored and the run-time to explore them, the whole thing should hold more weight, somehow.

Interstellar does a lot of things well but ultimately feels unfocused, mixing science and philosophy without being prepared to fully explore either. Crucially, it didn't leave me wanting to watch it again, so any callbacks and plot-points which my brain didn't piece together by the end look to be staying unstuck for some time, yet (and because of the erratic structure of the plot, there are plenty of those). Although with the best will in the world, the reveal™ in the third-act seems to have surprised Matthew McConaughey and Jessica Chastain's characters far more than it did anyone in the auditorium…

I think Nolan's vision may be grander than the film, this time.

The film's a lot more ponderous than the trailer, and that's a ponderous trailer.



Kinda. ish.



Not quite.



If you're going to see it, see it big.



Nope.



At some point, but I feel no burning need.



Not that I heard.

Why isn't this film called Relativity? That'd make far more sense for both the plot and the themes, surely?

*¹ And interestingly - as in the film Gravity - NASA still seem to be prepared to send people into space who are completely psychologically unequipped to deal with it. It doesn't seem to have previously occurred to the any of the astronauts that they may not be returning; that the mission they're carrying out is clearly far more fucking important than them returning to Earth with rock samples and a tan.

DISCLAIMERS:
• ^^^ That's dry, British humour, and most likely sarcasm or facetiousness.
• Yen's blog contains harsh language and even harsher notions of propriety. Reader discretion is advised.
• This is a personal blog. The views and opinions expressed here represent my own thoughts (at the time of writing) and not those of the people, institutions or organisations that I may or may not be related with unless stated explicitly.