Review of How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) by Adam P — 24 Apr 2015

'How to Train Your Dragon 2' came four years after the first film premiered in theaters in March 2010 to rave reviews and a surprisingly abundant bag of cash. I admit to you that I loved the first 'How to Train Your Dragon' very much. It was cute, the vocal work and designs were excellent and the animation was beautiful. I looked forward to seeing the sequel to this sleeper hit.

The story takes a time-jump of five years and follows a 20 year old Hiccup (Voiced again by Jay Baruchal) and his dragon Toothless and the rest of the characters from the past film including Astrid (Now Hiccup's girlfriend) as Hiccup seeks to map out the rest of the land. While out adventuring, Hiccup uncovers a group of dragon trappers led by newcomer Eret, son of Eret (Voiced by 'Game of Thrones' Kit Harrington) who tells Hiccup of his leader; a villianous dragon hunter named Drago Bludvist who seeks to take over the world with his dragon army. Along the way Hiccup must grasp with the discovery of his mom (Voiced by Cate Blanchett) who was thought to have been long since deceased.

'How to Train Your Dragon 2' is different from the first film in many aspects, its more mature and defined. The character designs are sharper and fuller as is the story. The script looks to move away from the cuteness and light nature of the first film and evolve into something along the lines of 'Toy Story 3'.

'How to Train Your Dragon 2' losses most of its cuteness to give way to a film that is mroe about growing up and discovery and adventure and loss... The film features much more emotionl depth then that of the first film. It'll leave you sad at a few moments - that I can say to you.

'How to Train Your Dragon 2' succeeds in becoming something new and different from the first film, but there was something lost between that five year jump. I believe that due to the growth and maturation of the lead characters, the jokes began to transition from the funny antics of Toothless and Hiccup into something else. Now we must rely on the side characters to give us a laugh now and then. The problem with that is the fact that the side characters are not main. We see way lesser of the side characters then that of Hiccup and Toothless and as such we recieve less oppurtunities for jokes to be expressed. I must note that these jokes that were presented didn't all work. There is one particular recurring joke that concerns a friend of Hiccup's named Ruffnut, sister to Tuffnut (Voiced by Kristian Wiig and T.J Miller respectively ) who falls for Eret, son of Eret, while two other friends, Fishlegs and Snotloat (Voiced by Christopher Mintz-Plasse and Jonah Hill)who both compete for her attention and affection from that of Eret. This was not that funny in my opinion, but i'm sure it will amuse the younger kids.

The animation in this movie is so jawdroppingly gorgous that I had to pause the film several times just to take it all in. The animation of the characters is so breathtakingly advanced and expressive that I contiually repeated the word 'Wow' at every moment a character spoke. The individual facial features are more detailed in that you can see much more. The skin is less smooth and has more tecture to it, the hair is less clumpy and you can see many individual strands... I swear I could feel exactly what the characters were feeling just by looking at their eyes!

All and all, 'How to Train Your Dragon 2' is superior to the first film in the terms of animation and emotional depth and development but I still can't shake off the general lack of cuteness and abundance of jokes that made the first film so successful. However, in the end I except that with a five year gap between the first and second film, we are bound to lose something and in this case it was that. B 4/25/15.