‘Pete’s Dragon’ Premiere Is ‘Full Circle Moment’ for Bryce Dallas Howard

Disney’s trailer channel has the Pete’s Dragon US trailer here plus a playlist of trailers, clips and featurettes.

Bryce Dallas Howard looked fierce at Monday night’s Hollywood premiere of Pete’s Dragon in a stunning animal print dress fit for the occasion.

Wonder is what Pete’s Dragon runs on, after all, plus the best craft, effects work and child performances a spectacle-sized kids’ movie can buy on a $60 million budget.

Reflecting the style of its indie filmmaker director David Lowery, who also co-wrote the script with 2013’s Ain’t Them Bodies Saints collaborator Toby Halbrooks, Pete’s Dragon is delightfully low key and delicate, resisting the heavy hand of music, dialogue, acting, directing, and editing. But his “Pete’s Dragon” still maintains the homespun feel of an American fable. So then on the third day, when everyone was relaxed around him, I was just like, ‘So what do I call you?’ He went, ‘Bob.

The film begins, in the “Bambi” tradition, in parental tragedy. A deer sprints out and, in poetic slow-motion, the gravity of the car’s interior is upended.

Following the tragic auto accident that killed both of his parents, Pete stumbled into the forest, only to find himself the target of a pack of hungry wolves.

On the surface, the tale of “Pete’s Dragon” is about a mysterious 10-year-old boy named Pete, who is lost in the woods for many years with no family or home. The opportunity for a dragon do-over in the era of lifelike CGI must have been irresistible. Furry as a fairway, he’s like an enormous emerald-green puppy. He’s more like a really big mutt of a dog: He chases his own tail in one bit, so prepare to hear awwws in the theater. Forest ranger Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard) and her soon to-be step-daughter Natalie (Oona Laurence) discover Pete and bring him back to civilization.

The film stars Robert Redford and Kiwi actor Karl Urban, fresh off Star Trek Beyond. Pete’s only anxious about Elliot, particularly when he learns that Jack’s friend and co-worker Gavin (Karl Urban) has glimpsed Elliot and wants to go dragon hunting.

First told almost 40 years ago, Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon” is being re-imagined into a new fantasy film.

There are Spielbergian gestures here of magic and family and faith, perhaps better orchestrated than Spielberg’s own recent try at a Disney film, “The BFG”. It’s an overlong, annoying, clumsy musical with mostly useless, repetitive songs and a scattered plot that makes little sense.

Pete’s Dragon is for everyone – young and old, children at heart, who ever looked up to the skies and imagined great winged beasts dotting the sky and taking us on adventures of glorious flight.

In that regard, however, the film does bear shades of E.T. in how we study this partnership between a young boy and an unknown creature that adults find threatening, not quite comprehending the safety of the situation.