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How to Train Your Dragon
Hiccup (voiced very nicely by Jay Baruchel) is a weedy, clever boy who lives in a dragon besieged community of Vikings who look like something out of an overweight production of a Wagner Opera. In the film’s one slightly jarring note they all inexplicably speak with Scottish accents – except for the teenagers who all speak standard USA. Whatever, as the kids might say.
Hiccup’s discovery of a dragon he has injured during a battle creates a huge change of heart for the boy, who initially wants very badly to be a dragon killer like his impressively huge and bearded father who also happens to be the chief of the village (Gerard Butler). Hiccup’s interactions with the dragon - which looks like a winged Axolotl but behaves like a very appealing cat/dog hybrid - give him not only genuine affection for the creature, but also leads to an understanding of why the dragons steal food from the villagers in the first place.
The tale features an entertaining but fairly standard coming of age element with a pleasant burgeoning romance between Hiccup and the feisty Astrid (Ugly Betty’s America Ferrara). There’s also the whole nerd showing his true worth trope as well, but this is the kind of cliché I am very happy for kids to be exposed to.
My sons, however, were far more interested in the sometimes thrilling, sometimes laugh-out-loud-funny interactions with the various splendidly conceived and visualised dragons, and that was the same for me as well. Going to a cinema packed full of sugar buzzed urchins can cause even the fondest lover of the big screen experience to fork out unconscionable amounts of money for Home Theatre, but this film held them in thrall. And it was more than the effectively used 3D element that kept us all quiet, it was the flow of a well-told tale without the padding you see in so many ‘grown-up’ movies.
Like the Shrek films, Dragon has a great classic fairy tale illustration look to it, though the dragons might have been spawned from an unholy alliance of Dr Seuss and Maurice Sendak. This is an entertaining, visually impressive kid’s film, the kind where ‘fun for the whole family’ doesn’t mean dodgy double entendre for the adults, but a story that moves through to its third act without outstaying its welcome.
Stas’ Wiatrowski
www.howtotrainyourdragon.com
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