I loved this Disney film when I saw it at the cinema and I loved it just as much two years later on a £1 charity-shop DVD. Pete, aged four, is orphaned when his parents crash their car on a remote forest road. He meets a green (sometimes invisible) dragon, who he befriends and lives with for six years before they are discovered by the outside world and everything changes... Not very promising on paper, but this simple film is surprisingly powerful and emotional. Robert Redford is endearing as the wise old man who believes in magic. His park ranger daughter (Bryce Dallas Howard) is convincingly sensitive as Pete’s new “mother”. Pete himself is played by Oakes Fegley, who delivers one of the strongest child-actor performances I’ve ever seen. There’s an ecology message (deforestation is not good) and the CGI effects are so sophisticated that you never once doubt what you are seeing. The soundtrack is brilliantly unDisney, with Bonnie “Prince” Billy, St. Vincent and Leonard Cohen all suiting the tender tone of the film perfectly. It’s difficult to say why this simple story of love and friendship ends up being so moving, but both times I have watched it I have been left feeling profoundly touched.
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