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Tuesday 3 January 2012

How To Train Your Dragon - Review


My film viewing habits sometimes follow a somewhat curious pattern, and this is one such example. Over the past few weeks, I've watched The Thing (prequel) and The Human Centipede 2 (Uncut), followed by Happy Feet and How To Train Your Dragon. That's quite an extreme contrast in viewing material.
Human Centipede was graphically shocking as you might expect, but I don't really get my kicks out of watching body torture or rape scenes, so I have to say my Winter might have been better off without it. The Thing prequel was a poor attempt at milking the success of the 1982 John Carpenter horror/thriller, which was a remake itself. The new 2011 film can't decide if it's a remake or new chapter in the series, and it's better off ignored. Anybody who says it's as good as (or better) than the Carpenter version is quite clearly an imbecile.
Happy Feet, on the other hand, surprised me by being a thoroughly enjoyable family-friendly animated feature about a penguin colony in dire need of fish. The voice acting was good, particularly Robin Williams, and I can safely say Australian director George Miller's talent spans beyond making Mad Max movies. Yes, I must be reaching old age prematurely, for I'm openly admitting that I enjoyed a family animation more than seeing several people stitched together end to end. Who would have thought it? (sarcasm)

The real highlight though was How To Train Your Dragon. I didn't really expect too much from it, as it was just something to watch with the missus on a bank holiday weekend. But it turned out to be the best film I've seen recently, and almost definitely the best animated feature I've seen in a very long time. For someone like me, it's no issue to admit that Toy Story brings back fond memories of family cinema trips and the early days of Pixar's CG films, and the sequels were eagerly anticipated as the long awaited conclusion to a series I'd grown up with. But for me to say How To Train Your Dragon is probably better than any of the Toy Story movies (surely not!) - now that's serious talk. And in terms of Dreamworks animated movies, yes it's also better than anything Shrek related. Let's face it, I might aswell just say this movie has become my favourite 3D animated film, with Pixar's UP being close competition.
There are a few cheesy moments for the sake of the children (the main character is called Hiccup for example), and there's the whole 'cute creature' element that sells the package to its feel-good family audience, but these are things that should be expected from this type of family animated adventure. And apart from these minor gripes it's all positive. Good voice acting, superb animation, a stunning music score, a song by Jonsi from Sigur Ros, a story that's far from original but holds up well within the film's concept. And there are dragons ofcourse, and Vikings. You can't go wrong with that combination, and when all those elements come together in perfect measure, you get a number of spectacular scenes that really leave the competition for dead. There's no formula for scenes like that in a movie. Occasionally, all the right creative influences are at work and it just happens.
Despite it being a film suitable for children, with no violence, profanity or gore in sight, once you get that cinematic buzz from those perfectly crafted screen moments, it's a film that's impossible to dislike. It's definitely in that 'feel good film' category, and it seems to bear a few similarities to Avatar regarding a scene or two, but in every way How To Train Your Dragon beats Avatar at it's own game, and it does it at about half the running time and half the budget. Amazing.