How to Train Your Dragon

For every solidly entertaining Dreamworks creation like Shrek or Chicken Run, there’s some truly awful clunkers like Shark Tale, Shrek 3 or Over the Hedge. So you’ll excuse me if I had my doubts about all of the praise being heaped upon How to Train Your Dragon. Surely the movie only had to meet the most basic of competencies to send critics and audiences into a tizzy about a Dreamworks animation product given their entire oeuvre.

But I was wrong. How to Train Your Dragon deserves every bit of praise that has been thrust upon it. It is so charming, endearing, good-natured and open-hearted that it feels more like a Pixar product. And like the best of children’s films adds a true sense of menace and danger to the giddy thrills. That last battle sequence leaves our two main characters torn up and battle-scarred in several different ways.

The true heart and soul of the film comes between the symbiotic and co-dependent relationship between Hiccup, our lovably awkward hero, and Toothless, the titular dragon that needs training. There relationship is akin to a boy and his dog, one so large that he could ride it around and travel very quickly, and could also breathe fire. Symbolically speaking, it’s a chance for kids to train and tame their overwhelming emotional baggage through gorgeously rendered sequences of flight and frolic.

Seeing as how this comes from the same creators of Lilo & Stitch, that beating heart and warmth shouldn’t come as a surprise. Also, that the family is broken, that the main characters are realistically troubled by their predicaments speaks to how wonderfully human this film is. And much like Lilo, Hiccup uses his brains and quick wit to solve his problems instead of relying upon action-adventure dare-deviling. Explosions are well and good, but they won’t solve the complicated problems involved in trying to make peace between humans and dragons.