Staples of kid-film plots—the underdog/non-conformist who must prove himself (rarely herself), the kid who’s smarter than the adults, and the boy who must prove himself to his dad—come together with the novel element of dragons. The particulars are that the kid (called Hiccup and voiced by Jay Baruchel) is a brainy, scrawny Viking in a society where brainpower is not prized and the dad is a burly behemoth (Gerard Butler) who would prefer a son like himself. Loosely adapted from the first in a series of kid novels by Cressida Cowell, the plot has Hiccup forced to learn the old Viking ways, but quickly discovering that those ways are wrong. (Cowell’s a Brit, but the Hiccup and the other kids sound American, while the adults have Norse accents.)
It’s probably because the movie was shown in 3-D that it made me think of Avatar, but it also shares the theme of humans treating the unknown with fear and violence. The dragons are not an alien race, but nor are they the threat the adult Vikings assume. Given that the plot that had seemed to be about condemning mindless slaughter, the destructive conclusion to the story (not present in the book) seemed wrong to me; it also makes no sense if you believe in the theory of evolution, but never mind. The most entertaining scenes are watching Hiccup learn the ways of the dragon and, on a visual level, watching the dragons soar against a backdrop of mountains and sea. The 3-D effects, as good as I’ve seen, seemed more prominent than in Avatar.
IMDB link
viewed 3/4/10 at Bridge [PFS screening] and reviewed 3/28/10
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