gogoschka-1
Warning: this beautifully animated tale is highly addictive! As soon as it's over you'll immediately want to watch it again. I'm a grown man, but somehow this movie managed to ignore all the layers of cynicism and fake toughness we grown-ups tend to build around ourselves to cope with life; it cut right through to the wide-eyed, adventure-loving boy in me, right through to the heart. It's impossible not to fall in love with this movie, with these characters - especially if you love wild animals. This beautiful story of a very unlikely friendship between a boy who's a bit of an outcast and a dragon is just so well done; it's never cheesy, yet full of passion, and there's simply not a dull moment in it.And although it's very funny, this really isn't just an accumulation of gags and one-liners loosely held together by a paper-thin story: this is a great adventure and touching coming-of-age tale where the protagonist has an actual arc; it tells an intelligent and compelling story about people who are not just one-note characters, and they're wonderfully realized through the great voice-work of such actors as Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson. The animation is fantastic, and there's so much playful creative energy at display in the design of the characters - especially in the design of all the different dragon species - that it's simply a joy to watch. 10 stars out of 10.
calvinnme
...not that this is necessarily saying much, since the films of the past decade are either made for the Academy Awards with some social message that hits the audience over the head with a social justice sledgehammer, or they are action films with lots of car chases and explosions and comic book heroes or they are 50 shades of obscene. But I digress. This animated film is beautiful to watch, but that is not the main drawing point. The drawing point are the characters. Even though this is set in some fictitious land full of Vikings beset with fire breathing dragons who are always raiding their livestock, you can easily relate to everybody. The main character, Hiccup, is the son of the warrior king of the Vikings. Hiccup is mild mannered, lanky, awkward - your typical teen of about age 14. He likes to build and invent things. Dad wants his son to be a dragon slayer. So one day, during an attack by the dragons, Hiccup actually catches one with one of his inventions. He grabs a knife and runs into the forest to kill the dragon to make dad happy. But he just can't. This "fearsome" dragon is tame, passive, dog-like before people had dogs. And so "Toothless" as Hiccup names him, becomes like a pet to Hiccup. The pair develop this beautiful unbreakable bond. And Hiccup learns about dragons.Hiccup is signed up for Dragon Killing class with the rest of the island's teens. Hiccup quickly rises to the top of his class but manages to not kill even one dragon. Instead he uses the techniques of bonding with dragons that he has learned from Toothless to subdue them into harmless pets. Nobody questions what is going on but Astrid, a tomboyish teen girl who just knows Hiccup is up to something.This film has genuine laughs, thrills, the real problems of sons and fathers disappointing and misunderstanding one another, the awkwardness of that first romance, and the idea that sometimes your enemy may be your enemy for reasons you don't understand. I watched this for about the tenth time last night and I have to say it just never gets old. Highly recommended.
