How To Train Your Dragon – Review
Now there is a Pixar movie every year as well as a competitor… usually from Dreamworks. Pixar, so far, always made it when it came to awards and winning people’s hearts. The last 10 yrs a lot of animation studios came up and i can see a lot of competition coming. Trying to throw Pixar off its throne. However… this Dreamworks movie clearly is one that can hold up to the Pixar quality.
You probably already know what’s going on in the movie. A young boy, growing up in a dragon hunting viking village finds out why the dragons always were so aggressive soon after he found a friend in one. He helps that wounded dragon to sort of heal up and they both become friends and try to solve all the violence that is going on between the dragons and the humans. Of course there are a few other things going on too but i don’t want to go into too much detail. I myself have 5 pet birds and the movie manages it to build a connection to everyone who has or had a pet. How you try to nurture it. How you try to learn what it needs and what makes it happy. Until, in the end, you have some sort of friendship going on. The story builds on those experiences and it works great. The dragon, how it behaves and how great it’s animated… it’s very cute and yet manages it to convey some danger.
The technical aspect in general works great in this movie. The overall look is partially a big minimalistic but that’s the style nowadays i guess. Pixar had the same in ‘UP’. The character design and models is great. There are different kinds of dragons and all of the designs have a specialty and something lovely on them. You know that there went some time and love into them.
I watched this film in 2d. Actually it’s made for 3d. Sometimes it felt a big weird. You can kind of see when a 3d movie got 2d’fied. Some goes for the other way. Nontheless the camera work is rather nice. Especially the flight scenes really give you a sense of speed. They show how much fun it must be to ride that dragon. How the characters trust each other and have to trust each other to do something like that at all.
I had a lot of fun and would say that this is my fav animated movie for this year. I never was a ‘Toy Story’ fan and Pixars third movie doesn’t tickle me at all to be honest. But that’s just my opinion.
8.7/10 from me today.
