This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:
Dusty: ::whispering to a dinosaur skeleton at the natural history museum:: Everything we know about you guys is wrong. [shouting toward the other patrons] THIS IS A DRAGON SKELETON!
Rating: PG
Director: Dean DeBlois, Chris Sanders
Writers: Will Davies (screenplay), Dean DeBlois (screenplay), Chris Sanders (screenplay), Cressida Cowell (based on book by), Marc Hyman (collaborating writer), Adam F. Goldberg (additional screenplay material)
Stars: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill
Release Date: March 26, 2010
Run time: 1 hour, 38 minutes
THE PLOT:
via wiki:
The Viking village of Berk is frequently attacked by dragons that steal livestock and endanger the villagers. Hiccup, the 15-year-old son of the village chieftain, Stoick the Vast, is deemed too weak to fight. Instead, he creates mechanical devices under apprenticeship with Gobber, the village blacksmith. Hiccup uses a bolas launcher to shoot down a Night Fury, a rare dragon, during a dragon raid. He goes into the forest and finds the creature but cannot bring himself to kill it and sets it free instead.
Before leaving with his fleet to find and destroy the dragons' nest, Stoick enrolls Hiccup in a dragon-fighting class with fellow teenagers Fishlegs, Snotlout, twins Ruffnut and Tuffnut, and Astrid, on whom Hiccup has a crush. Facing little success in the class, Hiccup returns to the forest and finds the Night Fury in a cove, unable to fly because Hiccup's bolas tore off half his tail fin. Hiccup gradually befriends the dragon, naming him 'Toothless' after his retractable teeth, and designs a harness and prosthetic fin that allows Toothless to fly with Hiccup riding him.
Learning dragon behavior from Toothless, Hiccup is able to subdue the captive dragons during training, earning admiration from his peers, but sparking suspicion and jealousy from Astrid. Stoick's fleet returns home unsuccessful after being destroyed by a massive dragon. Hiccup must kill a dragon for his final exam. He tries to run away with Toothless, but Astrid discovers the dragon. Hiccup takes her for a flight to demonstrate that Toothless is friendly. During the flight, Toothless is hypnotically drawn to the dragons' nest. There, a gargantuan dragon named the Red Death summons smaller dragons to feed it copious amounts of live food to avoid being eaten themselves. Realizing the dragons have been forced to attack Berk to survive, Astrid wishes to tell the village, but Hiccup advises against it to protect Toothless.
In his final exam, Hiccup faces a captive Monstrous Nightmare dragon and tries to subdue him to prove that dragons can be peaceful. When Stoick unintentionally enrages the dragon into attacking, Toothless arrives to protect Hiccup but is captured. Stoick furiously confronts his son for his deception until Hiccup accidentally reveals that Toothless knows the location of the dragons' nest. Stoick disowns Hiccup and sets off for the nest with Toothless guiding the Vikings. Astrid prompts Hiccup to realize that he spared Toothless out of compassion, not weakness. Regaining his confidence, Hiccup shows his friends how to befriend the training dragons, and they set out after Toothless.
Stoick and his Vikings locate and break open the dragon's nest, awakening the Red Death, which overwhelms them. Hiccup and his friends ride in on the training dragons, distracting the Red Death. Hiccup attempts to free Toothless; Stoick rescues them, reconciling with his son. Toothless and Hiccup destroy the Red Death through teamwork. Whilst escaping the explosion, Hiccup gets knocked off Toothless. The Vikings and Stoick find out that Toothless saved Hiccup from the explosion by covering him with his wings, but Hiccup has lost his lower left leg.
Some time later, Hiccup awakes back on Berk and finds that Gobber has fashioned him a prosthetic. He is now admired by his village, including Astrid, who kisses him. Berk begins a new era of humans and dragons living in peace.
My Review:
I enjoyed this movie a lot more than I expected. The story has a really fun and well-written coming of age arc. We get a boy earning the respect and admiration of his father, despite being very different than his old man. We get an unlikely friendship between said boy and a dragon, that ends a centuries old war. We even get a strong and kid-friendly romance arc. I mean, it's hard to mess up Vikings and dragons, but How to Train Your Dragon goes beyond that and just delivers a great film.
The film is the first of what has become a franchise and they are based off the book series of the same title, by British author Cressida Cowell.
In addition to the story, I thought the animation and especially the musical score were exceptional. The dragons were both menacing and situationally cute. The music was tense and fear inducing, but also sweeping and epic when the scene demanded that. If my word is not sufficient on these points, I'll merely add that the animation and score were both nominated for academy awards in both respective categories.
The movie is rated PG, which felt appropriate. There is a lot of tense fighting, a very scary-looking bad guy at the end, some gory discussions about dragon-killing, and a couple of injuries. However, the language in the movie was clean and there were no scenes that seemed inappropriate for a kid over about 8 years old.
Thematically, the movie is a story about how sometimes you're not as different from your enemies as you might think. It's also a story about how reckless kindness and compassion can help you see some true things that might not be visible with the vision of reason alone. I don't know how widely applicable that message is to put into practice. (Don't let your kids play with "misunderstood" bears in the woods.) However, it might be a good tool to use when explaining the hard-to-like kid at school with whom your small one might be dealing. Just as you don't know the truth lurking inside a dragon's nest, you don't know what a bully has going on at home. It's occasionally a good idea to look beyond what your eyes can see.
I definitely recommend How to Train Your Dragon one and I look forward to checking out other installments from the franchise in the future.
Have you see How to Train Your Dragon? If so, what did you think?
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