Review: How to Train Your Dragon

Zach was busy with his stuff the other week, so I hit up the post theater. Granted, I was a single adult going to see a kids' movie, but I had fun anyways. Here you go: How to Train Your Dragon.

Summary: Set in the northern town of Berk ("twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death"), the story follows the young Viking Hiccup. Berk has a pest problem: dragons, which continually raid the town. Hiccup wants to join his town's fight against the dragons, but is on the small, clumsy, and weak side of the spectrum, so his father, village leader Stoick the Vast, will not allow him to participate. The inventive Hiccup, however, still ventures out into a battle and ends up downing a mysterious Night Fury dragon with his one of his contraptions. When he sees the dragon face to face, however, Hiccup can't bring himself to kill it. Instead, Hiccup and the dragon (whom he dubs Toothless) begin a friendship that teaches Hiccup much about dragons and how his people have misjudged the species. Together, the two then face Hiccup's dragon fighting training, the ignorance of his town's residents, and a massive destructive force threatening both dragons and people.

I'm saying it now, but this movie reconfirmed my inner desire to have a dragon. Heck, I'd even settle for a fire lizard! I blame my mother for raising me on classics like Patricia C Wrede and Anne McCaffrey.

And just for reference, I didn't see it in 3D. That was just the only poster image I found that I wanted to use.

As I've mentioned before, voices are important to me in animated films. The voices here were pretty decent, nothing exceptional one way or another. I did think it was funny that all the adults had very thick Scottish accents (natural for both Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson), but none of the kids did. I suppose if you really wanted to over-think it, you could argue that it was from the new generation breaking with the old traditions, in more ways than one, but I think that's just years of IB obfuscation coming out :)

Oh, and David Tennant (of Dr Who fame) has a voice cameo too! He also did the audiobook readings for the series, so it was completely understandable that they find a way to slip him in :)

I liked the dragon designs. A lot of really creative variety in the different species, and I particularly loved Toothless' feline characteristics. Apparently the character designers were inspired by a staff member's black panther screen saver! Thank you IMDB trivia!

I wasn't as fond of the human designs. Well, really just the teenagers in Hiccup's class. Particularly Astrid. They were all just a bit too modern-southern-CA-teen styled for my taste. Particularly Astrid. Hiccup had a pretty modern hair style too, but it was still enough that you could see his face. With Astrid, I just wanted to clip her bangs out of her face SOOOO badly. Of course, I also have that feeling looking at the average teenager around here. Not a fan of SoCal teen fashion, lemme tell you. So, minor irritation, but it was definitely there.

Random thought: Hiccup is left-handed. I liked that.

The animation itself is great! In a dragon movie, it's really all about the flight sequences, and this one passes with flying colors (pun slightly intended!) The flights along the sea and sunset and misty, mysterious island are all very seamless and natural-feeling. The colors in the movie are so rich too, playing well with the different feelings of the scenes. And the final fight sequence is just awesome. They really pulled out all the stops with that one.

The story is wonderful. The movie is based on the books, not an actual adaptation, but I really want to look up Cressida Cowell's books at the library now and read the whole Hiccup series. How to Train Your Dragon is only the first. Most importantly, the movie keeps it as a character-driven story. There are funny lines and funny scenes, but it's really about Hiccup and his relationships with his father, his town, and his dragon. Keeping it centered around the characters really makes the climatic battle more intense (no spoilers, but it was intense! I was worried how they'd work it out!)

Ranting Sidenote: I need to not go to kids movies at 4pm on a Sunday afternoon. Too many uncontrolled kids and/or fussy younger siblings too young to sit through a movie. I realize I am a crotchety old movie-goer at the ripe old age of 20-something, but still, don't ruin the fun of the movie for everyone else simply because you didn't want to pay for a babysitter for your 2 year old while you took his 7 year old brother to the pictures!!

Overall: 5 of 5. Dreamworks has done it again. Between Kung Fu Panda, this, the Shrek movies, and the Aardman animation movies (Wallace and Gromit, Chicken Run, etc), Dreamworks has definitely eclipsed Disney animation in recent years. (Don't worry, I'm counting Pixar as separate from Disney). Definitely want this one on the shelf.

Oh, and the Dreamworks cast pictures again. I like them, and I have a spoiler down there, so needed the spacers :)

HERE BE SPOILERS (and dragons too)

I LOVED LOVED LOVED the last scene, where Toothless with his injured tail is walking with Hiccup with his now-missing foot to the door of the house. Very Anne McCaffrey's "The Littlest Dragon Boy" (my absolute all-time favorite short story of hers). Very sweet scene, not over emphasized. No sappy rubbing-your-face-in-the-pairing-of-cripples. Made me smile and I had to share :)