How To Train Your Dragon

So this week it was How To Train Your Dragon and it was partly due to the insistence of Lina, the other co-founder of the movie club, even though I was leaning towards The Last Song. Given the lack of new releases and the fact that we’ve seen pretty much everything out there, we were down to the bottom of the barrel when it came to this week’s selection. It definitely looked like a super cute movie at the very least. It was also my second 3D adventure so that was something at least.



The plot is very simple and the title sums it up nicely, a young Viking boy befriends a dragon and helps him to learn to fly again after damaging half of his tail wing. This friendship goes against the village’s ideas that dragons are to be feared and killed on sight. When the village angers the tyrannical queen dragon, its up to little Hiccup and his dragon to save the village. The robust cast includes, Jay Baruchel, Kristen Wiig, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson, America Ferrera, Jonah Hill, and McLovin’.


The plot was interesting and unique. It mixed fantasy with history and was nice, simplistic, and easy to follow. There was an element of violence and so I actually wouldn’t recommend for the very young crowd, probably at least 5 years and above.


The animation was superb. The main dragon, Toothless, was just cute as a button and really made the movie enjoyable. The director, who also directed Disney’s Lilo & Stich modeled a lot of Toothless’ attributes after Stitch, which is very apparent in the movie, as well as a house cat. The only thing lacking in this movie was an identifiable soundtrack, ie Up, Finding Nemo, etc.


Everyone does a nice job and I really didn’t recognize Gerard Butler or Kristen Wiig until I read the credits. It’s really hard to criticize voice work and I believe that’s a main reason a lot of stars take on these roles, because there really is nothing to lose.


The movie did turn out to be super cute and enjoyable. The cute dragon provided a lot of actually humorous parts to the movie which was nice. Animated movies really aren’t my thing, but this one was quite nice. The 3D imagery was much better than Clash of the Titans, but I’m still not a fan of 3D. I would recommend this to families with boys or girls that are at least 5 years old. I just think some of the fighting/violence may be a little much for very small children. “This is Berk. It’s twelve days north of Hopeless and few degrees south of Freezing to Death.” -- How To Train Your Dragon.