BEFORE: The dragons carry over from last night, as does Gerard Butler, who voices a main role in this film. I'm at the end of my heat and fire-related films (just as well, since it's sweltering in here - aren't there more movies set in the Arctic?) but now I'm firmly entrenched into a fantasy-film chain, with just one week to go before Comic-Con. I shipped out 2 boxes of merchandise to San Diego today, with another 3 boxes of DVDs and 10 boxes of books shipping from other locations. If we sell everything, it could be our biggest Comic-Con yet.
THE PLOT: A hapless young Viking who aspires to hunt dragons becomes the unlikely friend of a young dragon himself, and learns there may be more to the creatures.
AFTER: I've been informed by my co-workers that this is based on a book, and the book features the seven types of dragon seen in the film. I was prepared to say that was a narrative choice designed to sell more Happy Meal toys - but that's me, I've become pretty cynical about these things. Still, Dreamworks CHOSE the book to develop into a movie, and I'm sure the number of marketable dragons played a part in that decision.
It's hard for me to judge this film since it's so squarely aimed at kids - the main character is a kid, has problems relating to his father, is awkward around girls, etc. And what kid wouldn't want to train a dragon of his own and ride him across the sky? My days of such fantasies are long over - in fact as a 6 year old I demanded to know if fairy tales were real, I needed to sort out in my brain what constituted fiction and what stories took place in our world. And now I'm older, a curmudgeon in training, and find there's no way to watch a kid's film with the eyes of a child.
Still, there are parts of this film that are wildly entertaining (and entertainingly wild), but also parts I found frenetic - the kids today, with their short attention spans! If you don't have an explosion or a whip-pan every 30 seconds, they start to lose interest - Hollywood shouldn't pander to them, it just feeds their A.D.D.
As an adult looking at this story, it's a little TOO coincidental that our child hero happens to learn EXACTLY the lesson each day that will help him succeed the following day in dragon-fighting school. Is that too cynical of me to point out?
NITPICK POINT: Why do the Vikings have Scottish accents? Shouldn't they sound Nordic, with Scandinavian accents?
Also starring (voices of) Jay Baruchel (last seen in "Fanboys"), Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill (last seen in "Knocked Up"), America Ferrara, Christopher Mintz-Plasse (last seen in "Role Models"), Kristen Wiig (last seen in "Macgruber").
RATING: 7 out of 10 baskets of fish
Overall, I liked this flick. Even though it was kind of like a burger that you get as a 12-pack of frozen patties. It's a perfectly good product and even as you're actively enjoying it, you appreciate the difference between what you're tucking into right now and the burgers at that place in Watertown that always starts with fresh, premium grass-fed beef.
ReplyDeleteI can't help but think that Astrid (the girl who finds out Hiccup's secret to success in the arena) should have been given more to do. Or that (say) a community whose members have been killed and viciously maimed by packs of marauding wolves on a regular basis for generations would suddenly start keeping them as pets after one pretty OK weekend.
The big "Wait...what?" moment came at the end, when
(Oh, SPOILER ALERT, I suppose...)
...Hiccup is revealed to have been severely injured in the Epic Battle. It seemed as if the Severe Injury idea had been added to the story only after the unit animating the Epic Battle sequences had locked their storyboards, and an element that really needed to be done as a separate shot or at least acknowledged within the battle had to be handled with a line of dialogue from the Craig Ferguson character.
It was great to see the work of Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders again, though. "Lilo and Stitch" remains one of the best animated features of...
(checks IMDB for release date)
Yes, the past ten years.