Well, I wanted to write a positive review for this, but I don't really think I can.
It was okay. There were really good things about it, but the movie as a whole wasn't really good. The animation was pretty amazing, and it all looked very good. But for me, there was always a sense of too many cooks spoiling the broth.
I always harp on about Pixar, because not only do they achieve the beautiful look, there is also always such a strong, focused story, with a lot of heart. And really that is the key ingredient that always seems to be missing in pretty much every other animated movie I see.
And How To Train Your Dragon was really no exception. Anyway, first the good points. The designs, mostly were great. The dragons looked awesome, especially the main one, Toothless (The love child of that little creature from Lilo and Stitch and an axolotl). All of the backgrounds and stuff were great, and you felt pretty immersed in this world of Vikings. The premise was okay, but nothing special - young outcast goes against the grain and becomes popular and great.
But now the bad. Everything about it was too convoluted, both story-wise, and visually. The premise, though simple, would have been fine if it was kept simple, rather than throwing in a bunch of other stuff to fill it out. These aspects just became boring distractions from what you wanted to see. The other teenage characters, for example. There were too many of them, and you didn't care about them, not even Astrid the 'love interest'.
The key focus of the film should have just simply been the relationship between the boy and the dragon. That was the one thing you actually cared about. (Actually, Toothless was the only character that I liked and cared about. The boy, Hiccup, was annoying, and the voice actor sounded too old. The bumbling teenager thing was done to death. Yeah, we get that he's awkward, but does he have to trip over his words in every single line of dialog?) They should have pared the rest back to just slow down and focus on this aspect. I reckon that's what Pixar would have done with it.
Instead it felt like they were too scared to just slow down and have some quiet moments where you could just enjoy this relationship. They had to keep chopping back to some crazy action sequence to keep the viewer from getting bored. But this only had the opposite effect on me. Yawn, another dragon fight.
And it was the same visually. So much talent, kind of wasted. Some great shot comes on, nicely composed, with a bunch of detail- but then it's gone, and your eye is forced to look at something else. There's no room to breathe, and just enjoy the interesting world that's been created. These great looking Vikings, with masses of detail- little scars, and hairy knuckles- but there are ten of them on screen at the same time, jumping all over the place, so you don't really get to take it in properly. Too convoluted!
It just frustrated me, because there were really good elements that could have been used to make a great movie, but instead the good elements get smothered by a bunch of crap that doesn't need to be there. Which makes it just another forgettable movie.
2.8/5
1 comment:
Hey thanks... we'll wait till it comes out on DVD. I think you could have made it into an amazing series. We have all loved the book. Jack read it when he was 6, along with a bunch of his friends. They acted out the story in the playground for months.
We're off to ice-skate instead. KP
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