Flaming brilliant family fun
DISNEY’S beloved 1977 tale gets a stunning CGI makeover in one of those rare releases that really can be enjoyed by the whole family.
Funny, heartwarming and glorious to look at, it’s as if the technology has finally caught up with the story.
The cute-as-a-boxful-of-buttons Oakes Fegley plays 11-year-old Pete who’s lived feral in the depths of a forest since his parents perished in a car crash six years earlier.
His companion is a furry green dragon named Elliot who has raised him and become his best and only friend.
Not only can the beast fly but it also has the ability to disappear into thin air.
But the pals’ rural idyll is threatened as loggers move in and Pete is discovered by forest ranger Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) who takes him back to civilisation. There he meets her fiancé (Wes Bentley) and his brother (Karl Urban), the latter of whom sets out to capture Elliot for his own glory.
The film also stars Robert Redford as Grace’s father.
Disney’s had a chequered history revisiting its back catalogue, with results ranging from the woeful (those Alice In Wonderland movies) to the wondrous (The Jungle Book).
Now it’s seemingly set on remaking our entire childhoods with new versions of Dumbo, Pinocchio and Peter Pan all in the pipeline.
There’s no patchiness here, however, with this reworking easily trumping the original and staking an early claim to the title of family film of the year.
Such praise is earned through those striking visuals – Elliot truly is a marvel of technical wizardry – and an emotional core that seems custom-built to trouble your tearducts.
The friendship between boy and beast is so well crafted, so
well observed and so poignant that it brings to mind that other children’s classic, ET: The Extra-Terrestrial.
A soaring success.