How To Train Your Dragon

First off let me send a big F you out to AMC and every other opportunistic price gouging movie theater that charge $15+ just because a movie has the symbol “3D” on the end of its title. Don’t you jackasses get enough money from pimping your stale popcorn and dusty pretzels off to teenagers anyway? Why do you have to come mafia me out of my money for tickets now? Sheesh, and you HAVE to watch this movie in 3D, yes you heard me correctly, there is no “normal” option – at least for me there wasn’t. Still, once you get past the greedy, money grubbing paws of the theater and sit down to How to Train Your Dragon, you will be pleased at a cute story about a misfit Viking who manages to become something special.

The voice talents of Gerard Butler as big badass Stoick, Jay Baruchel as Hiccup and America Ferrera as Astrid did wonders for this sleeper hit of an animation. Hiccup’s quips and jokes were actually funny, and Butler channeled his inner Leonidas as the Dragon slaying Viking leader Stoick The Vast.

The best part of the entire thing is the dragon “toothless“, his big green eyes poking out from his ebon exterior convey so much emotion that he had one of the more endearing personalities of the cast. Hiccup (Jay Baruchel) is an awkward kid, but he’s a lovable awkward kid because his personality is so awesome. When people pick at him, he makes jokes, when he can’t lift something he creates a device to do it for him. For all his faults he was a stand-up personality and the kind of person you want to see succeed. Astrid (America Ferrera) starts off as the unapproachable hard girl but once she gets to ride a dragon she becomes quite the tough sweetheart – easily my 3rd favorite character after Hiccup and Stoick The Vast (Gerard Butler).

The tale of how to Train Your Dragon is really two tales, on one end you have Hiccup who wants so badly for his big badass chieftain of a dad (Stoick) to notice and be proud of him. On the other hand you have two worlds clashing, the world of Vikings and that of Dragon kind. The story involves the chance meeting of Hiccup with the rarest of dragons, the super special “Night Terror”, his befriending this Dragon and finally his quest in merging the worlds so that Viking and Dragons can live in peace.

Loved the landscape, loved the characters and loved the soundtrack, but I hated all of the Dragon designs outside of “toothless”. The damn things were so ugly to look at but the Vikings were all that. Even if you hate the look of everything, the style will grow on you by the middle of the movie.

With the 3D aspect, I loved the horizon shots of the longboats and the flight of “toothless” was a fun experience. Still, again I felt it to be wholly unnecessary and more of a cash-in to make this movie in 3D. My wallet bemoaned the gouge and the visuals were not enough to numb the pain I felt from purchasing those tickets. Still on its own, all 3D griping aside How to Train Your Dragon is a cute movie. I am not sure how well it will be received by the children but for us adults it was a good time.

Written by Greg Dragon – who has written 365 reviews on Spicy Movie Dogs.

Cinephile and opinion writer, Greg Dragon has been a fan of movies since the 80's when Kung Fu theater was all the rage and Roger Moore was James Bond. As an opinion writer that has reviewed Box Office releases on a number of prominent websites, Greg is the founder and lead critic of Spicy Movie Dogs.