Review
Review Date: 28-March-10
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Jubilation!
How to Train Your Dragon (2010)
Last week I expressed concern over the recent spate of movies about people who feel compassion for others only after getting a first-hand look at how those others live. Now out of the blue comes a movie to dispel my worry, a wonderful tale about someone who empathizes not just with an Other, but with an Other he has been taught to view as an enemy. How to Train Your Dragon is a timeless animated adventure, full of warmth and courage and equally thrilling in 2D or 3D. (I know, I watched both versions.) Expect to see this movie high on my Top Ten list when 2010 is done.
The story takes place in a Viking settlement where all the adults have Scottish accents but none of the children do. (Some Vikings did live in what is now Scotland, but I am confused why the kids don't talk like their parents. This being the movie's one flaw, I am willing to run with it.) The hero Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) is a scrawny misfit struggling to find his place. He tries to be useful as apprentice to the genial armorer (Craig Ferguson), but everyone around him is a burly, ax-wielding fighting machine, from his chieftain father (Gerard Butler) to the women and girls. What they fight is dragons, hated devils who raid their land, steal their sheep, and leave their homes in cinders. Hiccup dreams of killing the most feared and despised of these foes, the elusive Night Fury, just to prove that he belongs.
The entire clan regards this as a pipe dream, but during one raid Hiccup actually manages to hit the Night Fury with a catapult slingshot device. Following a trail of broken trees and churned-up turf, he finds the beast in a forest glen, wounded and tangled in rope and therefore an easy kill. Yet Hiccup looks into its eyes and sees pain and comprehension. Almost to his own surprise, he cuts the dragon's bonds instead of cutting out its heart, which proves to be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
It takes a while for boy and reptile to learn to trust each other, and in the meantime Hiccup enters dragon-killing training with his peers. It is an interesting juxtaposition: his growing acceptance within the village for supposed prowess at subduing dragons (he uses knowledge like where to tickle them to put them to sleep), and his clandestine bonding sessions with the Fury (aka "Toothless") which include discovering the joy of flight. Hiccup's human chums represent the standard array of comic doofuses plus sassy chick (America Ferrera), but they play an important part in his people's future so do not break the momentum of the plot. This thickens considerably after Hiccup's double life comes to an end. His father is appalled to discover his secret (in a heart-wrenching scene), and only a common enemy can win over him and the other warriors to the idea of dragons as friends. Let's just say this new enemy makes T. rex look like a puggle.
That Hiccup has youth and imagination, and does not need a jolt to clear his eyes of myopic prejudice as adults do, does not make him any less a hero. His instinctive stumbling towards a new way of viewing the world entails sacrifice which deepens his experience. Stirring on a visual and emotional level, How to Train Your Dragon breathes new (fireball-powered) life into the classic theme of finding yourself by finding others.
Copyright © 2010 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
