"How to Train Your Dragon" Review

Poor, poor Dreamworks Animation. No matter how good their movies may be, it is difficult to give them praise without adding some kind of 'but'. Shrek, Madagascar, and Bee Movie are good, but they rely too much on pop-culture references and gross-out humor. Prince of Egypt is good, but it is very dark and rather frightening. Antz and Shark Tale are decent enough, but blatant rip-offs of films by their rivals, Pixar. And those are just the good ones; other films of theirs, such as Madagascar 2, Over the Hedge, Spirit, and Monsters vs. Aliens miss the mark.

But no more. After 12 years, Dreamworks has finally made the masterpiece they have always had the potential to create. How to Train Your Dragon is a brilliant work on par with the best films of Disney, Don Bluth and Pixar.

Dragon follows the adventures of Hiccup, a young Viking who can barely lift a weapon, and is too soft to kill anything. And on his island of Berke, that's a problem- because it's also home to entire hordes of dangerous dragons.

Despite his weaknesses, Hiccup is determined to kill a dragon, and one night, he actually does- sort of. He manages to knock down a Night Fury, the most dangerous dragon of all- but since he was the only one around when he did so, no one believes him.

Hiccup exhaustively searches the forest he saw the Night Fury land in, and after several hours, he finally finds it near a lake surrounded by cliffs. The dragon's tail-wing has been ripped off, and as a result it is unable to fly high enough to escape. Hiccup befriends the dragon by feeding it fish, and names it "Toothless". He also secretly builds a replacement tail-wing for Toothless, which allows it to fly again. The scenes of Hiccup and Toothless flying through the skies around Berke are breathtakingly crafted, expertly animated, and really give the viewer the sensation of flight.

Thanks to his experiences with Toothless, Hiccup excels in his Dragon-Hunting Classes, easily defeating his training dragons in clever (but nonviolent) ways. Soon, however, he is selected for the honorable (in his village's eyes) act of killing a fearsome Nightmare dragon. Hiccup, however, has lost the heart to kill dragons, and his attempt to prove dragons as harmless instead aggravates it. In the ensuing battle, Toothless hears the commotion and rushes to help, thereby revealing him to Hiccup's father, Stoick. Stoick- a known hater of dragons- captures Toothless and uses him to lead the vikings to the dragon's nest, leaving only Hiccup and his small group of fellow Vikings-in-training to set things right.

How to Train Your Dragon is not your typical Dreamworks movie. It is mostly played for drama and action rather than laughs, and the comic moments that do appear don't rely on popular culture references that will become outdated in a few years. The screenplay by Adam F. Goldberg, Peter Tolan, Dean Deblois, Chris Sanders, and Cressida Cowell is suprisingly mature, never pandering down to children or obviously stating it's intended morals- indeed, it barely seems to have been expressly written with children in mind.

The voice cast is, in another un-Dreamworks-like turn, largely free of celebrities, other than small appearances by Jonah Hill, Gerard Butler and Kristen Wiig, and the up-and-coming Jay Baruchel (She's Out of My League) as Hiccup. Clearly, his voice and the others have been chosen for their talent rather than their star power, and it shows- all of the actors play their parts well, though Baruchel's voice initially can be a bit annoying.

The musical score is, in a word, excellent. Composer John Powell knows how to use music to provoke emotional responses, and his soundtrack does so perfectly, particularly in the aforementioned flying sequences.

If there's one thing Dreamworks can always be counted on for, it's that they consistently create beautiful Computer-animated worlds, and Dragon is no exception. Please, if you can, see this in 3D. Much like the massively successful Avatar, the island of Berke feels like a real place, especially in the incredible flying sequences. The people look great too, with highly imaginative character designs and well-produced movements.

That was fast: my very first review, and I'm already giving my very first

Awesome!