How to Train Your Dragon - Review

How to Train Your Dragon - ***

It's always been fun to imagine -- especially as a kid -- that you can live on a remote island in a nature-like (yet suspiciously clean without any dirt whatsoever) village where you can have the chance for adventure. Well, that's what How to Train Your Dragon gives us. The story is about that exact kind of village inhabited by vikings whose sole purpose seems to be to grow up and become big and strong just so they can kill a dragon whenever gangs -- ok, packs -- of dragons show up to pilfer livestock and destroy livelihoods.

The hero is a Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel), a young man who would be otherwise considered a boy if not for his dweeby-yet-decidedly older voice. Hiccup (the name is honestly played straight) is a blacksmith's apprentice (Craig Ferguson) who dreams of being taken on the journey to destroy the dragons' nest, only to be shunned by the entire village for being too scrawny, which is made even worse when his father (Gerard Butler) says there's something wrong with "this," referring to all of Hiccup in a single gesture.

But Hiccup has an obvious-to-the-audience advantage: his brains. During a fateful (really, when are they not fateful?) dragon attack, he demonstrates an invention of his that hits a dragon from far away, but instead becomes a pariah when his demonstration, unfortunately seen by no one, damages the town way more than usual. Still, his father believes that dragon training may straighten him out, so he gets his chance. Unfortunately for Hiccup, he finds the injured dragon, and notices something in the dragon. I'd call it humanity, but dragons aren't human. Nevertheless, Hiccup spares the injured dragon's life, and endeavours to understand more about the dragon, since all of the dragons in the dragon textbook (yes, the training involves a conveniently-placed textbook) have little more than "kill on sight." The dragon that Hiccup injured, however, is one whose entry states repeatedly "unknown," and "run away from immediately." Eventually, Hiccup discovers that the dragon now suffers from a permanent disfigurement, and after a long time of shadowing the dragon, he discovers how to help the dragon, and learns that the dragons are more than just instinctive murderers.

The story isn't a unique one, but it did offer quite a few original turns to the setting, including a secret regarding the dragons' nest that I dare not reveal. The movie was fun, and I suspect that kids will enjoy this one. I certainly did, anyway. The characters were nothing special, including the usual run of father-and-son cliches, as well as the gaggle of Hiccup's fellow obnoxiously-ambitious trainees (including former Superbad friends Jonah Hill and Christopher Mintz-Plasse). There was one in particular that stood out to me: Astrid (voice by America Ferrera). Not surprising, considering she is the object of Hiccup's eye. Astrid is one of the most obnoxious young girls I've seen. I get that Hiccup keeps screwing up in the beginning (duh), but her personality does a one-eighty no less than two times, and it's rather jarring to see her go from super-annoyed to super-jealous to... well, you know.

As for the subject of projection: yes, I did see it in 3D. I saw it in a half-empty cinema on a cheaper Tuesday night and paid almost the equivalent of a non-3D ticket on any other day. The 3D is not Avatar-good, but because this is a movie that was done three-dimensionally in the first place, it doesn't suffer from either strange things popping out at you (Avatar, in my opinion, had this problem with things like futuristic computer screens, etc.) or from being a live-action movie post-processed to be in 3D. But it does, like Avatar, use the 3D to bring more depth to the landscape, including a lot of flying scenes. There are a few scenes where yes, Hiccup does ride the eventually-named Toothless, and the glasses add a sense of awe among the landscape. I hope that 3D doesn't become a mainstay of cinema like this without vast improvements (I don't want to keep wearing those stupid glasses), including the darker picture, but once in a while, a well-made 3D movie that gives us an entire new world (or just new land) to gawk at would be a nice treat.