Pete's Dragon

Starring: Sean Marshall, Helen Reddy, Jim Dale, Mickey Rooney, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters, Jane Kean, Jim Backus, Charles Tyner, Gary Morgan, Charlie Callas (voice), Cal Bartlett
Directed by: Don Chaffey, Don Bluth
Rating: G
Genre: Animation, Musical, Comedy
1977

Times Seen:
Tim: 2

Summary: A boy (Sean Marshall) and his invisible dragon, Elliott come to a small Maine town.

Review:

Tim: Yeah, so Pete's Dragon is not good. I had only the slightest, vaguest memories of watching this film as a child. I remember liking the animated dragon, but everything else was lost to time. To view this film as an adult, I see that it's an overly long, boring, bad movie. I feel badly that I subjected my 9 year-old son to this film. Wisely, my 6 year-old daughter resolutely refused to watch it. She wasn't scared, she just thought it looked dumb. In the end, she was correct.

Don't get me wrong- there's a brilliant idea at the heart of this film. The story of the orphan Pete, on the run from an abusive family who purchased him, who has a sometimes invisible dragon named Elliott- it's a wonderful concept. I enjoyed the movie at first, including the musical numbers. The problem is that as the film goes on and on, it introduces too many other plot points that don't matter and drain the energy to watch. This film is shockingly 2 hours and 8 minutes long. I know it's a musical, but this is nothing short of outrageous. Why in the world did anyone think there was enough story here to account for this run time? The movie would have been immensely better at 95 minutes. So, in my estimation, it's easily 33 minutes too long. That's absurd. What happens is that as the film progresses, it gets insanely boring. It's so dull. It's repetitive, meaningless, annoying. I purposely chose to look at my phone fifty times during this film, before forcing myself to put it down. What happens on screen isn't interesting in the least. It's predictable, expected, unsatisfying. This is what ruins the movie. For a long time, I thought it was at least decent. But, as the story meanders forward, it dropped in quality substantially. I haven't seen a film plunge in quality in the back half like this in multiple years.

There's a lot I disliked about this film, but I want to highlight Jim Dale's performance as Dr. Terminus. I don't believe I've ever seen Dale in another film and based on this one, I'm lucky. His performance is so cartoonish, so over-the-top, so unrestrained and awful that he destroys the movie whenever he's on screen. And, of course, the film gives him a lot of screen time in the second half. His absurd performance ruins the film. I hated how he acted in this lunatic role, bringing no depth, no nuance to his character. Even though this is a children's film, he didn't need to be such a ridiculous villain. He was simply awful, Dr. Terminus was a boring, stupid character, and his songs, his shenanigans drowns a film that was doing okay before he showed up.

The rest of the cast is hit-or-miss. Sean Marshall is fine as Pete. There were tremendous moments in his performance, and there were a dozen moments when I cringed at his dopey look. I know, it's hard to interact with a dragon that isn't there and he is a young actor, but his performance is uneven. The kid's a solid singer, though. Helen Reddy is uneven as well, but she seems to bring more stability to the cast. Her performance at least works. Dale, as I mentioned, is atrocious. Mickey Rooney's performance wasn't always good, either. He's too over-the-top as well, although he never takes it as far as Dale does. I like Rooney, but I didn't love him here. Red Buttons is sadly paired with Dale, but gives a better performance every step of the way. It was so odd to watch Dale in the lead and Buttons as his sidekick, when Buttons did everything substantially better. Buttons isn't always great, but paired with Dale, he shines. It was surprising to see Shelley Winters in her role- unexpected, a bit uneven, but certainly had some nice moments.

The songs aren't great, either. I thought the first one- "The Happiest Home in These Hills" was one of the best. The music, the comedic performances, they worked exceptionally well. It's a catchy song and it starts the film off on an incredible note- I really loved this movie the first few minutes. "Candle on the Water" wasn't especially memorable, but it was nominated for an Academy Award, for Best Original Song. The film was also nominated for Best Music, Original Song Score. The performances throughout the film, the singing isn't bad. It's just that there's so few legitimately great songs here. There's too many overly long, bland ones.

I will admit that one of the film's greatest strengths was the blend of live action and animation. This was not an easy feat to pull off, but it's done brilliantly. Elliott spends much of the film invisible and the ingenious ways they show him interacting with the world around him are wonderfully fun to see. It's also a delight when Elliott turns visible. To see this animated dragon in the midst of a live action movie is truly great fun. I've complained a lot about this film (and they are warranted), but the animation/live action component of the film is terrific.

As you might expect, I'm definitely not a fan of Pete's Dragon. There were great elements to this film and a much better film could have been created from this. The music needed to be better. The acting was uneven at best, painful at times. The movie is absurdly long and wastes far too much time on pointless subplots that never account for much at all. The movie needed more urgency, and it needed far less of almost everything. This movie was painful in the second half. Movies should not cause you unnecessary, unrewarding pain.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 5.5



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