Advertisers may think they know what “How to Train Your Dragon” is about. They see the cute dragon, they see the fat one, the scary, ugly one, and they see Gerard Butler’s name stapled onto the credits and they assume a madcap adventure made to be coupled in with trailers about movies with talking, live action cats and dogs. Thank goodness someone saw how elegant the flying sequences were in “Up” and “Avatar.”
“How to Train Your Dragon” is a welcome surprise, a charming film that can stage a moment of the utmost beauty and tranquility through marvelous animation and the right pacing and tone. It has the same markings of any Dreamworks movie as well, but I became invested in the characters and enchanted by the visuals to even appreciate the longer, manic ending of action and fire breathing explosions.
The film takes place in a Viking village overrun by dragons on a regular basis. The tribe is fully concerned with killing and eliminating dragons of any kind, but after a scrawny boy named Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) has an encounter with a rare dragon he successfully harmed, he finds he has a change of heart towards the creatures when he looks into the eyes of this particular dark blue dragon and can’t bring himself to kill it. Continue reading “How to Train Your Dragon”