When I walked into How To Train Your Dragon back in 2010, I wasn’t expecting anything close to the bold, bright fantasy adventure that met my eyes. Boasting exciting visuals and a tone reminiscent of some vibrant blend of The Black Stallion and Willow, Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders’s adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s novels was a leap forward for DreamWorks Animation.
Earning a little less than 500 million worldwide, it was a hit with audiences and critics alike, and was later nominated for an Academy Award for best animated film. It lost out, unjustly in this critic’s eyes, to Toy Story 3, but there was a deserving fan-base ready for more adventures that came in the form of a Disney Channel series. Now, the heroic Hiccup and his precocious Night Fury friend Toothless are returning for an adventure set five years after the first, involving Burk’s fearless...
Earning a little less than 500 million worldwide, it was a hit with audiences and critics alike, and was later nominated for an Academy Award for best animated film. It lost out, unjustly in this critic’s eyes, to Toy Story 3, but there was a deserving fan-base ready for more adventures that came in the form of a Disney Channel series. Now, the heroic Hiccup and his precocious Night Fury friend Toothless are returning for an adventure set five years after the first, involving Burk’s fearless...
- 7/14/2013
- by Nathan Bartlebaugh
- Obsessed with Film
Yours truly hasn't had an opportunity to sit down and compose a review of this film until today, but in retrospect, I think it might be a good thing that I took the past few days to let my thoughts percolate, not because I couldn't decide how to approach my analysis, but because How to Train Your Dragon is such a damned fine animated film, that I didn't want to automatically lapse into bespoke accolades.
I'm going to anyway. So consider that one accolade already.
In the story, as the sun sets on the Viking island of Berk, the inhabitants' sheep periodically get carried away by dragons, who swoop down and flambé the village in the process. The creatures have become such a pest to the local folk, that Viking Chief Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) has made dragon-killing the town's chief occupation, as adolescent Vikings are trained in the...
I'm going to anyway. So consider that one accolade already.
In the story, as the sun sets on the Viking island of Berk, the inhabitants' sheep periodically get carried away by dragons, who swoop down and flambé the village in the process. The creatures have become such a pest to the local folk, that Viking Chief Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) has made dragon-killing the town's chief occupation, as adolescent Vikings are trained in the...
- 3/29/2010
- CinemaSpy
Dreamworks’ How To Train Your Dragon is a great example of everything I love about animated movies. It’s a big, bold, colorful movie that isn’t afraid to blend stylized characters with exquisitely real and breathtaking details.
Unlike the recent slate of warmed-over kid’s film trying to compete furiously to cash-in on the 3D technology, Dragon swoops in, gathers the technique under its wing and folds it confidently into the final product in such a way that what ends up on screen is just as compelling and exciting as the images that James Cameron brought us in Avatar. The big surprise at the heart of Dragon? It wipes the floor with Avatar in the story/narrative department.
Adapted from the novels by Cressida Cowell, Dragon re-imagines the world of the book slightly to create a land of danger and peril, with hearty, rugged Vikings doing battle with the large,...
Unlike the recent slate of warmed-over kid’s film trying to compete furiously to cash-in on the 3D technology, Dragon swoops in, gathers the technique under its wing and folds it confidently into the final product in such a way that what ends up on screen is just as compelling and exciting as the images that James Cameron brought us in Avatar. The big surprise at the heart of Dragon? It wipes the floor with Avatar in the story/narrative department.
Adapted from the novels by Cressida Cowell, Dragon re-imagines the world of the book slightly to create a land of danger and peril, with hearty, rugged Vikings doing battle with the large,...
- 3/26/2010
- by Nathan Bartlebaugh
- Atomic Popcorn
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