I’ve learned not to expect too much from animated action films lately ó they tend to be beautiful, but insubstantial.† Boring plots and clichÈd characters are the norm.† So going into Dreamworks animation studio’s “How to Train Your Dragon,” my bar was set pretty low.
This explains how surprised I was when it turned out to be thoroughly enjoyable film.
I should mention that I’ve never read any of the books ó in fact, I didn’t even know there were books until after I saw the film.† My thought process was literally “Dragons? Cool!”† But I loved this movie.† It had everything ó action, humor, gorgeous visuals and characters that weren’t completely one-dimensional.† Most importantly, it just had an incredible sense of fun.
The opening sequence immediately drew me in.† The film’s hero, a scrawny, brainy Viking boy named Hiccup, introduces the world of the film and all the main characters in the middle of a dragon raid on the village.† The scene gives a lot of exposition without ever slowing down the action. The dragon raids, it turns out, are a fairly common occurrence in Hiccup’s village, to the point where everyone has a job in the event of an attack.
Hiccup, however, abandons his post to test out a new invention of his; a spring-loaded siege weapon he hopes can take down an especially illusive type of dragon.
He hits the dragon, but can’t bring himself to kill it, and through a bizarre series of events they slowly form an uneasy friendship.† Hiccup’s manly-man dragon hunter father, meanwhile, decides that his son needs to man up, so he and a colorful cast of young Vikings begin training to be dragon hunters themselves.
This is about all I can say about the plot without giving too much away.† It went mostly how I expected, but there were just enough little twists and turns in the plot to hold my attention.
The characters were similar ó fairly standard animated children’s movie fare, but just different enough to make them kind of charming.
My personal favorites were a young Viking who liked to spout role-playing-game-like statistics about each dragon and a pair of macho fraternal twins who were constantly trying to upstage each other in the arena.
As always, there was a love story thrown in. Dreamworks took an interesting risk which made it an enjoyable rather than painful part of the story.† Hiccup’s love interest, Astrid, is far from the damsel-in-distress ó she’s the best actual dragon fighter in the class, and his constant rival through the first half of the film.† Her transition from enemy to friend to girlfriend wasn’t unexpected, but it was written, acted and animated in a way that didn’t feel stilted or clichÈd.
The visuals were amazing, from the harrowing battles against the dragons to sweeping majestic establishing shots of each beautifully designed location.
The dragons themselves managed to be at times both frightening and entertainingly ridiculous. In a way, this sort of sums up the whole movie for me ó the† adorableness and whimsy of the film somehow managed not to keep it from being exciting and suspenseful in its own way.