How to Train Your Dragon

How to Train Your Dragon isn't here for people who are looking to weep for an hour and a half; it's not here if you want some deep and spiritual meaning out of your movie; and it's not here to teach a life lesson you'll not soon forget. It's here to be purely a good time, an intimate adventure with a few lovable characters and some misunderstood villains, and an exciting bit of action to shut the kids up for a little bit while adults go do lame adulty things. It's not going to break any cinematic barriers or change the way you look at film, but it's well worth your $10 and even worth your $12 for the 3D.

How to Train Your Dragon seems like it'd be a typical tale of something incredible happening to a dorky kid and then no one believing him; except that there's dragons which immediately elevates any movie to a higher tier of awesome. Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is the scrawniest, weakest viking you could ever hope to see, scrawnier even than the object of his affection, Astrid (America Ferrara) who frequently beats his ass.

Hoping to be a viking hero like his dad, Hiccup snares a Night Fury, the deadliest and most illusive dragon, but when he finds the netted beast, he can't bring himself to kill it and instead mends it's broken tail and becomes his friend. In the grand tradition of parents never believing their kids, Hiccup's father Stoic (Gerard Butler) disregards Hiccup and his claims that the dragons are friendly and misunderstood, taking many of the village's men into a losing battle against the nest of dragons. Hiccup soon realizes how to make the adults believe in him, and does everything he can to stop his father from attempting to slaughter all the dragons that are left.

If you hadn't noticed already, the cast for How to Train Your Dragon is tops. Jay Baruchel leads the way supported by Leonidas himself Gerard Butler, touting his closest role to 300 yet, albeit digital. Beyond those two, you'll find yourself constantly saying, "God damn it who is that," as you listen to Craig Fergusen, America Ferrara, Jonah Hill, and Kristen Wiig lend their voices to the fully lovable and sometimes idiotic side characters. It's the all-American football team of Hollywood's rising stars, plus Gerard Butler who has already carved his star out of the chest of his enemies but unfortunately had yet to return to his true form of cinematic badassery.

Watching this movie is a joy, not because it's overly fancy with its cameras, but because the action is top notch and during each battle sequence you'll find yourself inching closer and closer to the edge of your seat until you eventually fall off at the film's unbelievable climax. There's a few scenes of Hiccup riding his newly trained dragon and they are stunning. Easily likened to the pod race sequence in The Phantom Menace or the first time Harry rides Buckbeak in The Prisoner of Azkaban, the scenes, for me at least, were so fun to watch that you'll forget most everything you're dealing with in your personal life and just become immersed in the flight. What a blast it was and the 3D certainly helped here.

The animation isn't something worth talking too much about these days as most studios have got a pretty good handle on it, but you might just explode at how cute Hiccup's dragon, Toothless, is. Whether it's watching him sit up on his back legs, walk around like a human, or draw Hiccup a picture in the sand with his tail, the only tears you might shed will be at how just gods damned adorable he is. I would certainly take this dragon home from the pound...you know, if there was a dragon pound.

While the film is very entertaining and funny for it's entire run time, it does follow a pretty standard and predictable formula which detracts a bit from the experience. Granted, the film is aimed at kids who probably haven't seen what can only be described as a shit ton of movies like I have, but that shouldn't stop the writers from breaking the mold like that other animation studio does with every one of its films.

How to Train your Dragon's few flaws aren't enough to pull anything away from your enjoyment of the movie. It's so easy to get lost in the world of Hiccup and his dragons that you'll find yourself not so much leaving the theater as waking up from a dream that was How to Train Your Dragon. Predictable story, fully lovable characters, great great fun. Go see this movie on a big screen right away.

4 Stars

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Comments

[Kristin]

Possibly the best picture of Toothless you could have ever found