How to Train Your Dragon

I remember being wary of this film when it came out a couple of years ago. Dreamworks, the company that made this film, has never been a champion of animated films, and whenever I looked at their SHREK movies, I saw a descending quality. I would like to say that "Imagine my surprise, but HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON was just as good as everyone said it was", but I feel as if it were merely run of the mill, acceptable, but containing some of the major problems of animated films and children's films in general. The film is about a tribe (?) of vikings living on an island, who are incessantly at war with dragons. The whole point of life in the village seems to be to grow up strong so that you can kill dragons for glory. One viking however (now, how many kid's movies start like this?) is different. His name is Hiccup, he's the son of the clanleader, and he's gratingly voiced by Jay Baruchel, who has been disappearing from the public eye quicker and quicker, thank god. Hiccup works with the blacksmith, but is a village-wide failure of a viking. One day however, he sets off a cannon that ensnares the vicious, and previously unseen NightFury, a dragon whose flames never miss, and who has never been seen. Hiccup is overjoyed, and begins to pull down his knife to slay the dragon, but as he is in a Dreamworks animated movie, is completely unable to kill the dragon, befriends it, and changes everyone's mind about dragons. The thing that I found unappealing about the film is that the idea that these vikings and dragons have been killing each other for centuries is shied away from, for the film's tone is tepid. Worse though, is that this tone doesn't make me believe that that would be possible at all, and because of that, everything that happens in the film held no high stakes. Whenever a dragon shot its fire at someone, they brushed it off like they'd just shot ash at them. Especially in contrast to PRINCESS MONONOKE, there's nothing daring about this film. Sure, it's entertaining, but isn't it what we contrast good animated movies to when we're saying "Miyazaki's film was so much better because it didn't..." do exactly what HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON does.

★★ out of Five