Dreamworks' How To Train Your Dragon

That 99% on Rotten Tomatoes intimidated me. What if I didn't like it? I'd get KILLED for a negative review.

I reminded myself that the Rotten Tomatoes system is a bit misleading as far as quality goes. It means 99% of people who saw it gave it a positive review. It doesn't mean that number gave it a rave or a five-star review. I reminded myself to expect to like it, but if I didn't love it, that would probably be fine.

And I did like it while not loving it. I suppose the thing I didn't like is something other people might understand or relate to, but I don't know if that thing actually lessened the movie for them. But I dunno, I felt with the specific premise of the movie, it didn't need all of the Dreamworks / Pixar style goofy jokes. And that's part and parcel of the entire genre, and part of every single Dreamworks, Pixar, Disney, Illumination, or Blue Sky movie. And you know what? I wish it wasn't. I wish animated films were allowed different tones, and I wish the rare animated dramas that DO exist were more successful than they were.

All that being said, the drama and pathos itself lands properly in the film. I took special notice of the fact that Hiccup's facial expressions are extremely, I'm not going to say realistic, but credible enough to have been hand-drawn. I think facial expressions are the final frontier of things CGI has yet to master, and while the fact that the characters look cartoony and not-real helps the animators do better expressions than crap like The Polar Express, I still noticed the expressions were good.

The story was solid too. I like that Hiccup takes the lessons he gets from training Toothless into taming the Dragons in the ring. I thought that was cool.

I hadn't seen the movie before, but I had read opinions that Stoick was a terrible father and terrible character, so I was on the lookout for that. While I don't exactly disagree with that idea for most of the film, I don't want to give him TOO much crap. Why? Because he comes around. When it comes to the kind of zealots Stoick was portrayed of as in most of the film, nothing can dissuade the entrenched false belief. But Stoick saying "I was wrong," when he did, during the climax no less, and not after the fact, makes me forgive him, because in Our Universe people like that can't learn from situations like this. Do you know what that makes Stoick? Unrealistic. But realism in film and TV is overrated. Real-life sucks. I much prefer the unlikely happy ending, even if it's not credible to how real people behave. And I've always been that way. Give Stoick a bit of a break. The fact that he changed his mind on his own without needing a Fox News deprogrammer makes him better than a lot of stubborn people in real life.

The climax started to, I don't want to say bore me, but more like drift away from me, because it was so action-packed and epic, and those scenes interest me less than the character moments. They always have, and if there are people out there who adore the climax for how edge-of-your-seat exciting it is, I'm going to straight-up admit I wasn't excited.

But it's a solid movie. It indulged in more celebrity casting that it should have, but the fact that I didn't really recognize most of the voices until the end credits says it handled it better than most current animated films do. So I'm giving that a positive review and a respectable four stars out of five. 4 stars.

Legend Of The BoneKnapper Dragon

I liked it. I especially liked the 2-D hand-drawn animated sequences. 3 1/2 stars.

Book Of Dragons

It's a cute conceit that the viewer is treated as the new Dragon Trainer recruit. 3 1/2 stars.

Deleted Scenes

Some interesting finds, but I actually think all three scenes probably SHOULD have been cut. Overall: 3 1/2 stars.

Axe To Grind (Test)

This was supposedly cut for being too long. And it is. 3 stars.

Goodbye At The Docks

In this storyboarded scene Hiccup actually says "Damn". Since there isn't any real cursing in the movie, I wonder if that would have been edited out if it had made it to final animation. 3 stars.

Aftermath (Test)

The scene is played very seriously and there are no jokes in it. The filmmaker introducing the scene claims the information was better given to the audience elsewhere but I'm wondering if it's actually the lack of a punchline which is why the scene was cut. 4 stars.

Gobber's Training Secrets

A series of super brief (around 20 seconds) promotional shorts. Considering the timeframe of the shorts, and the Dragons included, there is no way these are actually canon. Overall: 3 stars.

Lesson 1: Deadly Nadder

Cute. 3 1/2 stars.

Lesson 2: Gronckle

Funny. 4 stars.

Lesson 3: Monstrous Nightmare

Yeah, these cannot be canon. 3 stars.

Lesson 4: Hideous Zippleback

This one is a little annoying. 2 stars.

Lesson 5: Night Fury

The Night Fury being present means these are definitely NOT canon. 3 stars.

Lesson 6: Terrible Terror

Sort of humorous. 3 1/2 stars.