It's been at least a good twenty or so years since I last saw Pete's Dragon, but it was a film I certainly held some fond memories of from my childhood as it had been a favorite of both mine and my brother's as kids. With the new remake coming out this weekend, I found myself with an overwhelming urge to revisit the film and see if it still held up. Riding a heavy, heavy wave of nostalgia, I did enjoy rewatching it but at the same time wondering if an adult who hadn't seen it as a kid would enjoy it as much.
In early 1900's New England, a young boy named Pete (played by Sean Marshall) is on the run from a hillbilly family named The Gogans, led by matriarch Lena (played by Shelley Winters) to whom he was sold to as essentially a child slave. He has escaped with the help of a dragon, Elliot, who can turn invisible, but when he's visible is an adorable 2-d animated creation of Don Bluth. Pete and Elliot are able to avoid the pursuing Grogan clan of dimwits and stumble across the small New England fishing village of Passamaquaddy. After an invisible Elliot unwittingly causes some chaos around town and is briefly spotted by the local Lighthouse keeper Lampie (played by Mickey Rooney), Pete and Elliot retreat to a local cave off the beach by the Lighthouse. There, Pete is discovered by Lampie's daughter, Nora (played by Helen Reddy). She takes him in and although she doesn't believe his stories of a dragon, she plays along. Soon after, a snake oil salesman, Dr. Terminus (played by Jim Dale) and his assistant Hoagy (played by Red Buttons), arrive in town. Catching wind that there is a dragon and discovering all the supposed medicinal purposes that dragons carry, the two conspire to catch Elliott for themselves. When the Gogans also hit town, Dr. Terminus and Hoagy team up with them, with the intention of using Pete as bait to capture Elliott.
Pete's Dragon was another in a line of movies Disney made in an attempt to recapture the magic of Mary Poppins. The thing with this particular film is when you really start looking at it, it's a strange duck of a film. On one hand, it fits in with Disney's usual brand of peppy, golly gee whiz musicals that they got really good at making and at the same time it's dealing with some really dark subject matter, in particular Pete's past (it's made blatantly clear he was abused severely by the Gogans) as well as Lampie's alcoholism, which is mostly played for laughs. Both Elliott and Nora's fierce protectiveness of Pete from the Gogan's does provide a lot of heart to the film though. It's just narratively the two different sides don't mesh together all that well. The songs in the film, by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn, are reasonably good with the Oscar Nominated "Candle on the Water" being the clear stand out.
The effects really have not aged that well, but were probably impressive for their time. Still, Don Bluth's animation on Elliot is incredibly expressive and does a great job in creating an endearing character that still held up for me watching it again all these years later, as long as you can get on board with an animated dragon interacting with live action characters. The human performances do vary a bit. Both Sean Marshall and Helen Reddy do quite well in their roles. Everyone else on the other hand are quite over the top, mugging left, right and center. This is to be expected from Mickey Rooney, for whom it was a bit of a trademark, but even he is doing it more than usual. I didn't mind it, exactly, but I can see how it would get old fast for contemporary audiences.
Overall, I had a fun time revisiting this childhood favorite. I got chills as songs I had long forgotten about began, especially "Brazzle Dazzle Day" or "It's Not Easy", and seeing the film from beginning to end as memories of watching it as a kid came flooding back. Would someone who never saw it as a kid enjoy it as much as I did? If the YouTube video by Cinema Sins, "Everything Wrong With Pete's Dragon" is anything to go by, then no, probably not.
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