Movie Review: How to Train Your Dragon

Dreamworks isn't my favorite animation studio. "Shrek" was alright, but wasn't a great movie. It was funny and had a good story, but it also relied on topical references for it's humor. Right off the bat they've made sure that it won't survive the years. And that's their big hit. Compare it to "Shark Tale", "Madagascar", "Over the Hedge", "Bee Movie", "Kung Fu Panda", or "Monsters vs. Aliens".

Now they've put out "How to Train Your Dragon". I didn't believe that it was a Dreamworks movie. I had to look it up.

Look at these Pixar posters. What do you notice?Click to enlarge.

They're colorful, they show the title, they show the characters, in small letters there's the company name. So what?

Now look at these Dreamworks posters. What do you see?They're colorful, there's the characters, there's the company name, and in big letters there's the name of the voice actors. In the Shrek poster the names are bigger than the title. This tells you something about the priorities of the studio. Pixar places the importance on the story. Pixar IS the star.

Dreamworks places the importance on the actors. Their movies aren't really bad, but they can't compete with Pixar. They need the famous actors as a crutch.

Now have a look at the poster for "How to Train Your Dragon".Not a single actor's name. The name of the studio and previous popular works is relatively small. The focus of the poster is the movie itself.

I bring all this up because it seems that the movie benefits from this change of focus. They actually produced a great movie. I'd expect this from Pixar or from some small new company, but not Dreamworks.

What we have in this movie is a viking village that is beset with dragons. The son of the village leader is a scrawny twerp to wants to help, but can't. He's small and weak and clumsy. When one of his inventions manages to take down a dragon nobody believes him. He hunts down his downed dragon and finds he can't kill it. So he lets it go.

Over the course of the movie he makes friends with the dragon and learns enough about them that he quickly leads his dragon hunting class. Still, he won't kill the dragons.

Naturally, the village finds out about the friendly dragon and uses it to go after the main nest. And the kid has to go in and save the day.

Ok, there's some familiar themes here. The same has been said of "Avatar". It's a good story, well told. I'll probably get it on DVD.