How To Train Your Dragon (2010)

It will be hard for me to say much about HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON that hasn't already been said; I feel like I need only let you know which camp I fell into when watching this movie: the one that loved it or the one that found it to be the same old, same old. Nobody bashed the film, but some were more enthusiastic than others.

What sent me to the theater to see the film (aside from my son's interest), was the promise that the use of 3-D was as good as "Avatar," probably the only movie up to this point for which the use of 3-D felt like an enhancement of my movie-going experience rather than a gimmicky hindrance. I have been more than a little vocal about how unnecessary I find 3-D to be and how it does more to throw me out of the world I'm trying to be a part of than it does to draw me further in.

There's also the added cost of 3-D; it's obnoxious. Also obnoxious is the fact that this is what the kiddies want. So, in the past year, I believe I've seen five or so films in 3-D. Some of them were just plain bad in the format ("Monsters vs. Aliens") and most of them didn't seem to need the 3-D or the format did nothing to make the film a better viewing experience ("Alice in Wonderland"). "Avatar" was my one exception, a film that is exceptional BECAUSE of its 3-D (which makes its upcoming 2-D-only DVD release a mystery to me). Now I have two exceptions.

Very much like "Avatar," HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is: a) a mostly-recycled story about someone who treats the creatures of his land differently than everyone else and b) a good movie from a visual standpoint that turns into a great one whenever the inhabitants are seen flying through the air.

The story told in HTTYD is well-tread children's fare with a new, and darker, coat of paint. Here we meet Hiccup (voiced with sass and contemporary comic timing by Jay Baruchel), the son of a respected Viking and feared dragon killer, Stoick (Gerard Butler, in "300" voice). Hiccup - big shocker - is an embarrassment to his rugged father because he is a wisp of a thing, uninterested in learning to kill dragons himself and, therefore, in violation of the attitude of generations of Vikings. Stoick essentially rejects his son to the point where Hiccup has no other choice but to train to kill dragons after all if he has any chance of even being able to hold a conversation with his dad again. That's not what he wants to do, though, and of course his more truthful urges soon get the best of him.

It turns out that Hiccup is a Nordic Cesar Milan; in an effort to prove his worth he captures and wounds one of the most dangerous and elusive of all of the dragon varieties and, instead of killing it, befriends it. I'm simplifying this process here, but I also found this sequence to be one of the most warmhearted and sincere in the film and think you should experience it for yourself rather than having me describe it fully here.

No one will believe that Hiccup has even seen this variety of dragon, though, let alone entertain the notion that Hiccup has fitted the thing with a prosthetic tail fin to enable it to fly again and now frequently saddles up on the thing and rides it like the offspring of Pegasus and Seabiscuit. He calls the black dragon with a round head and green cat eyes Toothless, a nod to an early - and dead wrong - observation that the dragon had no teeth.

Before long, Hiccup is showing mercy to the other varieties of dragons being used to train his peers to kill them. Before long, one of them, the tempestuous Astrid, is on to him. And the rest is standard operating procedure. Yes, the boy will prove his father wrong and teach the town a lesson. Yes, he'll nearly die doing it. And yes, there will be a dramatic capture and subsequent rescue. Yadda, yadda, yadda.

With my most critical reviewer's brain on, I don't think I could give HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON much credit. It's not original to anyone who's seen as many movies as I have, and you only have to go back as far as the last major 3-D triumph in theaters to find too many close similarities. But I have to tell you - watching this film made me feel like a kid. I had fun watching it. I smiled, I laughed, I gasped, I said "aw!"

I loved Toothless. The film's animators gave the dragon the mannerisms of a tough-t0-train dog (and reminded me a lot of my own dog, actually). I loved the wit of Hiccup. And those flying sequences? Yeah, they live up to the billing. For someone who hates 3-D, this one disarmed me. What worked might not have been Earth-shattering, but it worked well. And sometimes, that's the most you can hope for in a movie. How well did everything they were trying to do work? It's a question we should be asking more frequently than whether or not a film suits our personal tastes.

With these thoughts in mind, the otherwise-average HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is much better than that. My kids enjoyed it and, doggone it, I did too!

3.5 out of 4