*Spoiler Warning For This Review*

Pete’s Dragon (2016) is a remake of a 1977 film of the same name. The film updates the story, having it take place in the Pacific Northwest instead of in New England like the original, while also moving the date from the turn of the 20th century to 1977. For full disclosure, I’ve never seen the original so I can’t comment on the differences between the two films. Pete (Oakes Fegley), the titular boy, survives a car crash deep in the forest and lives with a dragon for six years before he’s discovered by Park Ranger Grace Meachum (Bryce Dallas Howard). Pete’s Dragon is a safe, rather uninteresting movie about a lost boy and the dragon who finds and befriends him as well as the people who try, and ultimately succeed, in separating them.

Pete’s Dragon is a film that contains a small cast of characters, so the opportunity was there to give them nuance and depth. Unfortunately, that’s not what happened. The film’s characters are mostly one dimensional, but they are portrayed well by the actors. Surprisingly, the child actors, Oakes Fegley (Pete) and Oona Laurence (those are their real names), who portrays Grace’s stepdaughter, are naturals. They don’t have any awful, cringe-inducing moments and handle the material they’re given quite well. Pete himself just wants to get back to Elliot the dragon, and vice versa, but because he’s a kid, he’s at the mercy of the adults around him, and has almost no agency until the ending. Even in the film’s climax, the duo need an adult for their ‘master plan’ to succeed. Contrast this with films like The Sandlot, The Peanuts Movie, Stand By Me, or either of the It films, where adults are present, but the children retain their agency and their actions and decisions drive, and are crucial, to the plot. Bryce Dallas Howard is perfectly serviceable as Grace, but she’s an utterly boring cardboard cutout, while the film’s antagonist, her future brother-in-law, Gavin (portrayed cartoonishly by the wonderful Karl Urban), is an idiotic lumberjack.