ALARIS' REVIEWS

16th October 2010
How To Train Your Dragon (2010)

I’d heard good things about this animated kids movie, and the premise sounded fun.

Scrawny teenager, Hiccup, is a social pariah in his Viking village, preferring to build contraptions rather than slay dragons. When he inadvertently befriends an injured dragon, his life becomes a lot more complicated.

I was actually disappointed by how ‘Dreamworks’ the movie was, although this is a matter of subjective taste. As an animation studio, Dreamworks has a fondness for self-absorbed, neurotic, New Yorker style characters, whom I generally find annoying. The studio is also a fan of overt, self conscious humour, while I prefer the sweet, quirky humour of studios like Pixar.

That being said, How To Train Your Dragon is reasonably watchable, largely due to a likeable plot with a positive message about challenging your preconceptions. However, the execution doesn’t do full justice to the story potential.

The characters are fairly one dimensional, the world is fantasy rather than fantastic, and the dialogue is pretty ordinary.

How To Train Your Dragon isn’t a bad kids film, but when it’s being compared to films like the emotionally moving Toy Story 3 (2010), or the imaginative Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga-Hoole (2010), it needs to do a lot better.

It feels a little like a movie made by neurotic adults for neurotic kids, whereas Pixar films feel like movies made by sweet, quirky people for other sweet, quirky people.

Verdict: A watchable kids fantasy film. You could do worse, but you could do better.

If you like Shrek (2001), you might like How To Train Your Dragon.