Hola all. Massawyrm here.
Somewhere between the lofty, delightful successes of KUNG FU PANDA and OVER THE HEDGE and the bored, obnoxious tedium of MONSTERS VS ALIENS and SHREK THE THIRD, Dreamworks Animation has found a middle ground with the respectable, enjoyable, but utterly forgettable HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON. A perfectly admirable take on the classic a-boy-and-his-dog story, the film’s only problems are its adherence to one convention while it shamefully shuns another. It is everything it wants to be: fluffy, adorable and occasionally funny; but sadly it lacks the magic to make it anything resembling a classic.
Set in a Viking village on a cold, rocky, remote island somewhere within the Arctic Circle, the film centers around Hiccup – voiced by Paramount’s current man of the hour, Jay Baruchel - the young, nerdy, scrawny son of the epic level Viking chieftain Stoick – voiced by 300’s Gerard Butler. These choices, while understandable from a marketing perspective, are among of the film’s oddest. I’ll buy the notion of Scottish Vikings, but when all the adults sound Scottish and their kids are voiced by the youngest members of the Judd Apatow stable, there becomes a certain level of disconnect. Apparently, not only do dragons exist in this universe, but so too do Scottish accents that develop with age.
But once you get past the accents, the movie is actually pretty cool. This nearly uninhabitable island, beset by 9 months of winter and three months of summer hail, has one other problem: it is attacked by dragons with the frequency of bad weather. Adapting to these ever threatening conditions, the Vikings have become a society of dragon slayers, going so far as to have training in the art of killing them. Enter Hiccup - the brainy, clumsy stereotype ever the embarrassment of his hero father who wants nothing more than to earn that father’s respect. When one of Hiccup’s traps downs a Night Fury – the most deadly and mysterious of the invading dragons – he gets his chance at his first kill. But he can’t do it.
And that’s when this becomes a by the book a-boy-and-his-dog story.
Visually impressive and loaded with a number of great character design choices, this film is simply wonderful to look at. Every dragon has its own look and feel and the Vikings all share this mythical quality that makes them look more like overdeveloped video game characters than people – and I mean that in the best way possible. The story moves along at a good clip and hits all the right notes that a family film should, being just as entertaining to adults as it is to children.
So where does it go wrong? Two places. The first is that it adheres way to close to the standard storyline of this kind of film. It’s a movie about the son of a dragon slayer who befriends a dragon; thus the film is all about filling in the blanks until our hero discovers that “Everything we know about you…is wrong.” It goes from being a shell game of hide the dragon to the standard But dad, you don’t understand! They’re not our enemy, on through all the classic tropes you’re expecting. You can set your watch by the revelations in this film. Kids will find this story new and exciting, but adults, while being entertained, will find the story almost overly familiar as this has few real surprises to it.
The second problem has long been a problem with Dreamworks Animation itself. They have no teeth. Their films almost universally have the same ending, a bizarre world in which everyone gets what they want as universes meld together to create some kind of lasting peace in which everyone lives together in harmony forever. Or some variation thereof. Normally this is fine as it isn’t like their films exist in any sort of reality to begin with. But really great a-boy-and-his-dog stories don’t end well. Instead, they end perfectly. And by perfectly I mean you weep like a little girl. Whether OLD YELLER or E.T., the story ends in a manner in which you really want everyone to live happily ever after together, but you know they can’t. Dreamworks Animation, despite their association with Spielberg (once the reigning king of such things) doesn’t believe in those endings.
It’s exactly why everyone compares them unfavorably against Pixar. Pixar isn’t afraid to make you cry. Hell, they pretty much encourage it. But HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON isn’t Pixar. It’s Dreamworks. And continuing the Dreamworks aesthetic, this film proves to be an inoffensive, Saturday afternoon matinee safe for the whole family and absolutely free of tears. It’s definitely worth a look, but simply lacks the emotional punch to leave a lasting mark.
I like this movie, and enjoyed it while it was on. But days later I was struggling to remember details and had to re-watch the trailer to refresh my memory. I really love what they were attempting here; I just wish they’d manage to pack some real heart into this somewhere. Solid, but forgettable.
Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em.
Massawyrm
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