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RackedFocus Blog: How to Train Your Dragon Review

By Gaveliers, The Gavel Media Team, on April 7, 2010 12:53 AM

By Sean Meehan, Video Editor -

RackedFocus is the official film blog of Sean Meehan for The Gavel. Here, you will find the reviews, rants and musings of an above-average, slightly over-opinionated film geek. Comments, questions or suggestions are always welcome – in fact they’re encouraged.

Sometimes a trailer can tell you everything about a film. Take the trailer for Myley Cyrus’s newest, The Last Song: a heavy serving of melodrama with a drizzling of shirtless man-candy should make for a pretty basic, sort of sloppy little film. Turns out that (surprise, surprise) the film is everything the trailer made it out to be, albeit with less water-drenched teenage men then you would expect. Other times, a trailer can completely misrepresent a film, and that’s most certainly the case with DreamWorks’ newest, How To Train You Dragon. Do not judge this film based upon its trailer, because Dragon is a heartfelt, hilarious and exhilarating picture that does so much right that any small quibbles one might have are rendered, well, toothless.

Dragon tells the story of Hiccup, a young boy on the Viking island of Berk. Hiccup is son of Stoick the Vast – the biggest and baddest leader the Vikings as well as the most effective “exterminator” of the island’s one pestilence: dragons. Although he’s not exactly of Viking stature, spindly Hiccup desperately wants to be a part of his community, but despite his best efforts, he’s not much of a dragon slayer. When his father sets sail to find the dragon’s nest, he enrolls Hiccup in dragon training so that he can learn to finally be a chip of the old block. Just before he can start, however, Hiccup discovers that he has ensnared a dragon – but not just any dragon – he’s bagged the dreaded Night Fury, the most mysterious and feared of them all. The only thing is, this particular dragon seems decidedly benign, and as the film progresses Hiccup learns that these flying reptiles may not be quite the threat that his father believes them to be.

Visually, the film is masterful. It has been said by other reviewers before, but reiteration is the most sincere form of flattery : the flying sequences in How To Train Your Dragon out-Avatar Avatar. You should see this film not just in 3D, but in IMAX 3D if possible. Take a deep breath, accept the absurd cost for a ticket and just jump in. I only managed to see it in old-fashioned, humble regular 3D and spent much of the film experiencing a bubbling of that sort of rush one experiences in an IMAX presentation. The character designs are admittedly highly cartoonish and stylized, but the overall look of the film lends itself to a storybook-esque treatment. If you think about it, what does a Viking look like normally? Pointy helmet, battle axe, obnoxiously bulbous gut veiled by an equally enormous beard. They looked goofy before anybody decided to make them computer-animated anyhow.

The visuals can only be so good if they’re accompanied by a strong voice cast, and that is certainly the case here. Hiccup is voiced by Jay Baruchel, who can do the earnest, wimpy act as well as anyone. He is complimented by great performances from Gerard Butler as Hiccup’s father and from Craig Ferguson as Hiccup’s boss/dragon trainer. There is, however, one performance that stands above the rest, although it’s hard to really call it a performance. The character of Toothless (the dragon that Hiccup finds and trains) is by far the star of the show. The allegories to our relationships with more conventional pets (namely dogs) are fairly obvious, and are hammered home by the character of Toothless in such a way that it makes you want to go out, buy a puppy, and smother it with attention. Quite simply, How To Train Your Dragon made me realize how much I love my dog more than My Dog Skip or Marley and Me ever could dream of. As a fun little factoid, Toothless’s character design is based heavily on the design of Stitch from Disney’s Lilo & Stitch, film that was co-directed by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois who also directed Dragon.

With the recent blind infatuation with all things tri-dimensional, it’s safe to say that people should be selective when it comes to forking over $15+ for a ticket these days. Every project under the moon is getting the stereoscopic treatment post Avatar, and I worry that we’re getting dangerously close to a world where Citizen Kane might be rereleased in the format. That said, some filmmakers have learned how to appropriately and effectively use the technology, and in the case of How To Train Your Dragon, the ticket price should in no way dissuade you. That’s not to say that the film is flawless: the story is by no means anything groundbreaking, and like most DreamWorks animated films, it lacks the subversive quality and biting commentary that many Pixar films offer. Despite these concerns, what remains is a great film that is certainly worth seeing. If nothing else, when choosing between Clash of the Titans or How To Train Your Dragon, resist the temptation to release the kraken and treat yourself to something genuine. 8.5/10