Review of How to Train Your Dragon 2 (2014) by Jlplatten — 12 Jun 2014

This is a very good film, but for me it lost the charm of the original. Typically, sequels to an animated movie end up being trash, but this film doesn't follow that trend. As a sequel, it has more dragons that are very interesting and cool looking.

The action, graphics and overall story in the film are great as well! I'm very happy with the progress of the main characters, and it really sets up the 3rd film well. Where I was turned off, was the constant need to force Toothless into doing cute actions.

In the first film, Toothless had a genuine cuteness to him, but in the sequel it was overdone and quite frankly became distracting. For example, there would be some important dialogue between characters, and then Toothless would be doing something in the background.

.. I guess they put this is for the kiddies who could care less about what's going on in the story, but as an adult, I care about the characters and the challenges they're trying to overcome... but I couldn't focus on what they were saying with how distracting Toothless became during those scenes.

Also, I really liked the rag-tag bunch of Hiccups friends in the first film. They were a ton of fun, but in the sequel, they didn't have the same impact. Astrid as Hiccups girlfriend is boring, and Snotlout, Fishlegs, Tuffnut were not really funny.

Ruffnut was definitely the best of the group, but her "joke" quickly ran its course, when they used it over and over again. Other than the many distractions from Toothless and the lack of fun from Hiccup's group of friends, this movie was a fantastic sequel.

I will recommend it to all families and feel like it's a great challenger to Lego Movie for best animated film of the year.