Dragon Girl, in premise, takes after a lineage of “supernatural pet” movies that adorn family DVD collections in no small measure. It focuses on a young boy named Mortimer, who endures loneliness at Christmastime until he learns about a young girl who has run away from home and is taking refuge in any unoccupied housing she can find. While she hides in a suburban basement (while the owners are out on a holiday trip), Mortimer happens upon not only her, but her surprising companion: a fire-breathing dragon, no bigger than a pony and just as adorable. Mortimer must endure his more selfish inclinations, tempted to use the dragon to achieve social media virality and, with it, the friends he so desires, versus the friendship he experiences with this hidden runaway girl, Sara, and her enigmatic dragon companion.
The synopsis of this film may conjure pleasant memories of classic unconventional pet films like Free Willy, all the way to Lilo & Stitch in a more contemporary sense, but unfortunately, Dragon Girl lacks the practical craft or heart that hoists those classics into an enduring lifetime. The story reads as rather generic, lacking the specific cultural context of a work like Lilo & Stitch or the enriching world-building of How to Train Your Dragon, two films this movie resembles a combination of, but with very little that truly distinguishes it. While not difficult to watch at any point, if prompted to show this film to young audiences, it’d be hard not to instead suggest the more artful special effects of Pete’s Dragon against this film’s bland CGI creatures, or the iconic emotionality that can be observed in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, as opposed to the narrative beats of this film feeling played out by the numbers.
At a feather-light runtime of eighty minutes, Dragon Girl takes very few swerves in its narrative and hits every story beat you may already imagine, as our titular refugee child and her friendly dragon risk abduction by shady governments and predatory onlookers. A flat English dub and uninspired on-camera direction do nothing to adorn this story with qualities or characteristics that would make it worth watching over any alternative listed above. Optional Purchase.
Is Dragon Girl a good choice for children’s library programming?
Dragon Girl operates at a frequency that appeals rather squarely toward young audiences, and while it doesn’t contain content that parents or educators would find objectionable, it also offers very little artistically enriching or morally pertinent for school-age audiences. The best reason to platform Dragon Girl for young audiences is its messaging on the topic of social media, as the protagonist Mortimer has to juggle his desire to achieve social media popularity with the safety of Sara and the dragon, bolstering a valuable lesson on prioritizing one’s friends and their welfare over superficial ambitions such as social media.
How can educators use Dragon Girl in the classroom?
There are heavy topics to be mined from the progression of Dragon Girl, which exposes, if briefly, a subplot involving a war across borders that forces the character Sara into her circumstances of hiding. While the broaching of this topic is rather oblique, it does pose an opportunity to discuss current events in an educational setting, as wars that displace and endanger innocent children are unfortunately something the contemporary political landscape is no stranger to. These themes never cause the film to cross into a tone that’s frightening or outwardly shocking, meaning it can be used to open this topic up to audiences of any age.
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