Rating of
4/4
How To Train Your Dragon Review
Myviewing - wrote on 05/19/10
Many years ago when Toy Story debuted in theaters, computer animation had officially become a new form of film making. Not surprisingly enough, film companies immediately followed suit in order to generate their own success story on a financial scale. Some were good, some were bad, some were just plain forgettable, and this spectrum couldn't be any better exemplified by the streak of films left by Dreamworks. So last year when I saw Fantastic Mr. Fox in theaters, that was the first I saw of the trailer for How to Train Your Dragon. I didn't think much of it at the time since I thought it was likely going to be another film to hold the kids off until Toy Story 3 arrives this June. But when the film came out in theaters and I was checking Rotten Tomatoes one day, the reception I saw for this film was just astonishing. So far it has a 98% fresh rating and an average of 7.8/10 from critics. Obviously this was surprising for me because these are numbers I usually expect from Pixar's films every year, and so I obviously let the curiosity get the better of me and decided to check the film out for myself. Overall I can say that I'm really glad I gave this the chance, since this is quite easily what I would call my surprise hit of 2010.
In terms of story, we're presented with a Viking village called Berk. Whereas most villages have mice and critters for pests, here be dragons… in a literal sense. Our main protagonist is a growing boy named Hiccup (Yes, in a village faithful to Viking culture and mythology, we have a boy named Hiccup) whose dream it is to slay a dragon and show his strength and worth to the village of Berk. He believes that he is successful one day when he uses a cannon he built is able to hit the legendary Night Fury that no one prior has even been able to see. Though successful, he learns that the village will only believe him once he brings the dragon back dead and gutted. Despite his best effort he finds Night Fury, but as you might guess he isn't able to bring himself to slay the mighty beast and through much unintended situations, Hiccup ends up befriending that which he is meant to slay. Giving away much more of the story would probably be spoiler worthy, but this is the main gist of the story overall. In a nutshell, probably the best way I can describe the story is a significant amount of Avatar with a dash of E.T.
Animation has always been a top priority for computer animation artists to improve upon every year, and How to Train Your Dragon succeeds very well in this department. The human Vikings are very lifelike and the dragons are exotic, detailed, and imaginative. Having seen this film in 3D, I can say that the 3D was pretty much just there in the normal sequences, but the flying sequences with Hiccup and Night Fury are extremely well done and make you feel as though you're flying from Hiccup's perspective.
Another aspect the film accomplished was how well written the script was, because contrary to what you might guess How to Train Your Dragon isn't a comedy, but one with a healthy dose of dramatic depth. It's not so dramatic that it does things to tread into PG-13 territory, but to quote Dennis, it's "committed, not a string of p@$$y jokes!"
There was just a ton of stuff in this film that simply worked for me and had me entertained from start to finish be it the animation, the varied number of dragons, the dramatic story, the flying sequences, How to Train Your Dragon is quite easily Dreamworks' best contribution to the computer animation genre since Shrek. If you're a family man looking for something fun to offer your kids to be entertained as well as yourself, or just like dragons in general, you can't go wrong with this latest film at all, and I certainly hope this is a sign of things from other computer animation studios to come.
