How To Train Your Dragon

I totally understand why people love this movie. Personally, I think its good, not phenomenal, just good. But I understand why people love it.

Its this little bastard right here. I'm sure I could go on a rant about how Dreamworks is exploiting the synapses in your brain that make you go AWWWWWW when you see this guy and I'll get to talking about that a little bit later in the review but I understand why people love this film, you can't watch this film without losing it a little bit when you see the dragon above.

How to Train Your Dragon is an animated film about a young boy living in a village of Vikings. This boy, Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) is quite small compared to the other vikings and can't quite get anything right. He's usually in the way and is known as the town goof. His father (voiced by Gerard Butler) of course is the leader of the village and is a little embarrassed by son. See Hiccup is not the brute viking that Gerard (real name not important, I like that one more) was when he was a kid. However, Hiccup is very excited to kill a dragon and prove himself to the village and more importantly, his father.

See Hiccup obviously isn't as strong as the other vikings in the village and the fun part about his character is that he wants to fit in and the way he does that instead of brute strength is to use machines that he devises on his own. And they work. The kid is actually very smart and he just doesn't fit it.

The one part about this is that I didn't feel like he brought in these mechanisms enough. He had one in the beginning and one he used on the dragon. I would have liked to see more of these mechanisms but the lack of them doesn't exactly take away from the film.

Well Hiccup uses the mechanism to knock down a very rare dragon. He intends to follow it into the woods and kill it as it is tied up. But when he gets to it, he realizes he can't kill dragons. He says that he sees a bit of himself in this dragon and sees that they were just as scared as he was.

When he releases the dragon, it doesn't kill him and is in fact wounded.

The next portion of the film is really a developing of a relationship between Hiccup and the dragon he nicknames Toothless.

And yes, these two are adorable. And its not an obnoxious relationship, its just a relationship on mutual respect for one another.

It doesn't seem like Toothless is Hiccups pet, and Hiccup doesn't seem like he's totally out of control. Its hard to explain but its a very modern and well done relationship.

Through this time where Hiccup is helping Toothless fly again, he starts learning more about dragons that they don't put in the textbooks and he uses this knowledge to peacefully defeat dragons in the training that him and the other young people in the village are going through under the instruction of Gobber the Belch (voiced by Craig Ferguson)

The movie is both very simple, and very complex. And its a lot of things done very well. Its a great father-son story. Its a great underdog story, its a great story of friendship.

Its really good to see this quality of work coming out of Dreamworks as far as animation goes. I'm not saying that the studio hasn't been doing well for a few years now, but its good to see them going onto bigger and better things than Shrek.

The other great thing about this is that while Toothless is freaking adorable.

I mean look at this bastard

While he's adorable, he's not the one thing that sells this film. 

A new trend in animation films is to make it so there's a cute cuddly element to it. 

The best example of this is the minions from Despicable Me. 

Its this new idea that if the story doesn't sell the movie enough, of course these little bastards will do all the work for the studio and they continue to rake in the profit. 

Now Despicable Me, from what I remember, was a decent film with a heart warming story. But of course that wasn't the main focus of its success. The real focus was these ambiguous little yellow things that just happened to be one of the most adorable things that ever graced the big screen. 

Little kids ate this up, Teenagers ate this up. 

People my age (in their twenties) still eat this shit up. And its mainly from the success of the first movie (due in no little part to the success of the minions) that Universal Pictures green lit a sequel. 

But my point is, while Toothless is a marketable and adorable element to the story of How To Train Your Dragon, the story and other parts about the film really stand out and its not just Toothless selling the film. 

I mean there's no way they could make an entire movie out of these minions right?

...shit

But overall, How to Train Your Dragon is a solid film. Its not usually my style to watch animated films, though I throw some in this blog every once in a while, but the film is good. I think the main hype that came out of this movie was the fact that the story was very good... AND Toothless and the adorable dragons. 

But usually that stuff doesn't get me, I'm tough and cannot be persuaded by...

...God Dammit

But those are my thoughts on How To Train Your Dragon. What did you think? What do you think is cuter, the dragons in this film, or the minions in Despicable Me? Comment and Discuss Below!

I'll leave you with this. I guess since its after Christmas this isn't that relevant anymore but here's a guy who programmed his lights to the music of the film. The music was good. Enjoy!