My critical faculties evidently were not well-honed at the age of five, because I loved this movie when it came out. I ought to go back in time and beat some sense into that version of myself … no, wait, I think my dad did quite a thorough enough job of that. Seeing Pete's Dragon again, expecting some kind of joyful nostalgia, I was instead met with almost complete tedium. If Disney® wanted to open a theme park devoted to the most tiresome experiences and unpleasant emotions (they could call it DismalWorld® and build it in Little Rock), this film could be the flagship ride. Pete (Sean Marshall) is an orphan on the run from the inbred Gogan family (led by matriarch Shelley Winters, at her grossest). Fortunately he has his sometimes-invisible animated dragon friend Elliot around to take care of business. Except that well-meaning Elliot's clumsiness most often results in Pete getting in trouble for something he didn't do. So Pete mostly mistreats Elliot, who takes it like a bitch. The dynamic duo make their way to a shabby seaside village, where Pete is taken in by lighthouse-keeper Helen Reddy and her constantly inebriated father Lampie (Mickey Rooney, at his near-grossest). No one believes Pete's earnest tales of his dragon, except those who inadvertently see Elliot first-hand, resulting in several scenes hinging on the musty old Abbott & Costello knock-kneed "I'm humorously scared" routine. Indeed, most of the scenarios in this movie are drawn from stock ideas that were obsolete even when the story was initially conceived as a Disney® project … in the early '50s! There's an "Oklahoma"-style dance number with street urchins tappin' in the streets, a debauched bacchanal in the saloon complete with people dancing atop rolling barrels, a cave-setting seemingly recycled from House of Frankenstein, and a one-room schoolhouse where corporal punishment is mercilessly deployed at the most minor infraction … not to mention an actual duncecap! This was 1977?! Complications arise when a couple of carriage-riding snake-oil salesmen come to town to peddle their phony wares to the dim-witted townspeople … these guys are given several musical numbers despite their story not having much to do with the overall plotline. Eventually, they start scheming to buy and/or steal the dragon, while the hillbillies make their way to town to reclaim their ownership of Pete, who was sold to them by his parents! Helen Reddy is a surprisingly comforting presence amid all this, singing hopeful (if unmemorable) songs and providing a modicum of Julie Andrews-ness, despite mourning the supposed death of her sailor boyfriend, who, expectedly, returns to port in one of the film's countless endings. Why they thought such a non-epic required more endings than The Return of the King is as totally mysterious as why Pete's Dragon runs in excess of two hours. Don Bluth's animation is pleasing, but clunkily integrated into the otherwise live-action footage, giving the whole movie a giant sense of utter compromise. Though Elliot is "adorable" in that classic Disney® way, the sheer boredom factor is super-high, and increasingly numerous, irrelevant, and desperate songs certainly don't help. By the time they start singing about how to have a "Brazzle Dazzle Day," you pretty much just want to die. The last ten minutes entail cacophonous screaming, raging squall, near-electrocution, and cannonfire. Dreary, dreary, dreary. To be employed only as punishment for when your Finding Nemo-loving kids start acting up.
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