Those ancient Vikings sure have been around.
So, in the Viking village, Berk, we have Vikings speaking with Scottish accent, Vikings talking with Irish accent, Vikings talking like American teenagers with stutters (blame it on their parents’ stealing words from their kids’ mouths and their inability to understand their kids’ struggling to find their bearings in the world turning complicated around them (Read: girls/boys, zit, teachers’ demands ("What?! Homework??! Again???! But you gave us, like, homework, like, last week????! Bummer…."), girls/boys, BlackBerrys, B.O., girls/boys, and so on with lots more girls/boys in between), complete with a falsetto of a boy growing up to be a man in a man’s world. This is how we are introduced to Hiccup, the protagonist in Dreamworks Animation’s newest offering: How To Train Your Dragon.
How To Train Your Dragon excels in ways that soar high into this writer’s deep subconscious (no pun intended), as flying (on the back of your dragons) is the highlight of the movie (Guess I dream of flying, then. Better than (last Tuesday’s) dream of cracking peanuts and feed them to bats, I guess). And watching it in 3D (with those ugly 3D glasses on) helped.
Hiccup is your average misunderstood below average teenager (who happens to have a soft heart, a crush on the village’s tomboy—Astrid, and a knack in mechanics) in a Viking village of Berk—A village where architecture and house building are thriving businesses, thanks to dragons attacking their village every other week, shooting fires and brimstones against the houses and macho fully-muscled (and bearded and braided) cool-looking horned-helmet wearing Vikings who all fight gallantly with their catapults, spears, swords and everything else they can throw at those dastardly dragons.
All.
But one.
And that one is Hiccup.
And from this point on you can guess the direction the movie is heading.
So, in terms of story there is nothing original really in How To Train Your Dragon. But I like the way the movie makes an effort to stir away from silent agreement shared amongst Hollywood’s CG animated moviemakers: use as many splashy colors as possible, show everything off on the screen (it doesn’t matter if they don’t necessarily move or if they look bad compared to some matte shots used in movies in the 60s, 70s or 80s), have some cool shadowing effects yet still show everything off. Oh, and, of course, cute talking animals.
Yup, How To Train Your Dragon does NOT have cute talking animals. The dragons don’t talk. Instead they growl, they have their tongues lolling out and smack their lips, and show their teeth, and they looove it if you scratch their belly or neck, and they purr. Like a dog. Or cat.
But by God, they do NOT talk.
And, sure there are a lot of colors flying around on screen, but compared to some other CG Animated movies (UP springs to mind. And AVATAR), How To Train Your Dragon shows less of these.
The dragons in How To Train Your Dragon come in various shapes and sizes, each having its own distinct qualities (Power, Speed, Stamina, Weakness—get your Compendium sticker book at the nearest expensive bookstores that sell expensive imported books in your city), and knowing their statistics will help the villagers in their never-ending (SPOILER ALERT: until at least the last 15 minutes of the movie) enmity against the dragons.
Hiccup is one unlovable character in the movie. From start to finish, I couldn’t stand hearing his voice and his meek demeanor. So he’s supposed to be a softie. So what? It shouldn’t stop him standing upright, should it? Should it? And although his "friends" are so generic you can find them in most all movies with teenagers in them, they are still interesting to see (the twins—Ruffnut and Tuffnut’s continuous bickering is fun to see)
But the flying sequences, dragon-fightings and the aerial battles on the dragons? Those rock! From simply flying and maneuvering in the air (training Toothless, Hiccup’s Night Fury (love the name!) dragon) to the fights on land and in the air, the actions come fast and furious (No. I didn’t have that movie in mind when writing that. I had Tom & Jerry’s The Fast and The Furrious, instead), and glorious with thunderous explosions that literally rocked my seat, debris flying this way and that, big, big fires and billowing smokes that I could almost smell inside the movie theater. And that slow falling soot after silence finally regained had me and my kid reaching out to touch it. Watching it in 3D (with those ugly 3D glasses on) helped.
