Review of How to Train Your Dragon (2010) by Chads. — 27 Mar 2010

How do you tell a story that doesn't get overwhelmed by special effects and video game-inspired action sequences, especially in a hyper-commercialized movie culture climate where the studios who finance these spectacle-driven films have such comtempt for moviegoers? Narrative is on life support, but The Wachowski Brothers were pushing it when they literally filmed a video game with the 2008 mega-flop "Speed Racer", so maybe narrative isn't completely dead, and the audience, not completely braindead.

The moviegoing public obviously thinks that "Avatar" is the gold standard, the template for melding technology with story, but the "Dances with Wolves" ripoff, arguably, lacks a truly compelling protagonist.

Not only is Jake upstaged by the Na'vi natives, but the fake fauna and flora, as well. While "How to Train Your Dragon" is heavy on action and employs the artistically bankrupt(and cheesy) 3D process, the filmmaker knows how to tell a stirring action-adventure story(which just happens to be animated), while remaining commercially viable.

The moviegoer has somebody to root for. Hiccup(Jay Baruchel) is the classic square peg: an intellectual, who in some cruel circumstance of fate, lives with the great unwashed in the most unlikeliest of settings.

"How to Train Your Dragon" is something akin to "Lucas and the Vikings". (A moment of silence for the late Corey Haim.) Through empirical observation and having an innate aversion towards killing, the scrawny Viking aces the dragon training program with his brains, not brawn.

He sees the world from a different perspective, which the film then literalizes when Hiccup and Astrid(America Ferrera) take flight on Toothless' back, where the two children share the same point-of-view as their people's sworn enemy.

Looking down on the hamlet from the sky, the children undergo a rite of passage more profound than their daily lessons in warfare. Both boy and girl, especially the boy, realize that they've surpassed their parents.

Stoick the Vast(Gerard Butler), Hiccup's father, doesn't have all the answers. With more subtlety, "How to Train Your Dragon" echoes the Kevin Costner film too, as the Viking and the dragon find a common ground despite their shared history of violence.

Since the film has drama, humor, and most importantly, a humaneness, the culminating action doesn't whizz across the screen with the usual disconnect to our emotive senses. Like "E.T.", heck, like even Corey Haim, nobody wants to see the dragon, or the boy, die.