Pete’s Dragon makes its way to Build-A-Bear Workshop

Redford, 79, known for films such as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Out of Africa, plays Meacham, the father of forest ranger Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) and the only one other than Pete (Oakes Fegley) to encounter the dragon.

A song from Disney’s original 1977 film “Pete’s Dragon” seems to sum up nicely what Hollywood has been up to in the last five to 10 years. Pete’s Dragon is loyal to its positivity and finds its power in the simple beauties of its optimism, even when the film goes into darker places.

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The original “Pete’s Dragon” came before “E.T”, of course, but in retrospect you can feel its influence on the Steven Spielberg classic. “Pete’s Dragon” is going to hit the movie theaters on August 12, 2016.

But if you’re looking for a cute movie to watch with your kids, family or maybe even on date night, it delivers a cute film that’ll take you on a fun adventure and leave you wanting your own fluffy dragon to cuddle with. Also worthy are the film’s messages of preserving our forest and wildlife (deer, hare, etc. make appearances), in spite of some loggers and lamebrained hunters who especially do damage.

Director David Lowery garnered critical acclaim for his preceding film, the indie mood-piece Ain’t Them Bodies Saints, depicting the relationship between two lost souls in a resourceful, mournful way.

Q: The film shot all over New Zealand, which is a handsome place. While the film is set in the 1980s (without giving us a direct year), Pete’s Dragon is timeless, not giving us any triggers to reminisce over.

If playing an actual CD in an actual CD player is your thing, head over to Amazon to pick up a copy of the original Pete’s Dragon soundtrack on CD. Flash forward six years later to when Pete and Elliot are living together in the middle of the woods. A movie about a back-to-nature orphan wasn’t really that much of a stretch after all.

Fegley is solid as Pete, a kid torn between the adopted family he has and a more human one that could be, and Howard oozes maternal warmth as the situation goes south for Pete and Elliot. In a terrific opening sequence, Pete is lost in the OR forest after the death of his parents and, in a very unlike-Spielberg move, we see the dragon himself saving Pete before the opening credits.

In this modern-day twist on an age-old tale about a boy and his dragon, an orphaned child found in the woods fights to keep his pet dragon from being hunted by the very same people who took him in. Pete manages to get himself separated from Elliot, and finds his way into the family of Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Jack (Wes Bentley), Gavin’s brother and married to Grace.

Ever the outdoorsman, Redford would walk to the set “from the base camp a couple miles away from where we were shooting”, Howard says. “When I read the script I thought, ‘Well, this reminds me of my childhood with Disney movies, ‘” he says.

While many parents can’t wait to inundate their children with the films they loved from their youths, Howard and her husband, actor Seth Gabel, have a little more patience and an overriding theory. But that’s what I was able to do at the Pete’s Dragon junket in Los Angeles when I interviewed Robert Redford. I love storytelling because I think we’re bred on storytelling.

Look, I know movies are corporate products, with budgets, line-items, and boardroom projections to meet.