The makers of How to Train Your Dragon, which include co-directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch), as well as various writers including Peter Tolan (Analyse This), do a wonderful thing in your enjoyably boisterous animated adventure: they have a creature as a central character that does not talk. No wisecracks. No pop culture reference. No snide commentary. Not even a signature line that segues into a promotion for a fast food chain. As the modern movie business goes that’s the equivalent of heresy.
The creature in question is a Night Fury, a kind of dragon so fearsome that it’s barely seen, instead of just heard as it unleashes destruction. It has – when we finally get a good glimpse of it – a snub nose, scuba black skin and mournful eyes. It looks like it belongs in an early Hayao Miyazaki movie. Hurt and difficult to understand, the Night Fury is otherworldly, and one of the pleasures in How to Train Your Dragon is that you watch it learn to communicate with its unlikely captor turned friend, Viking adolescent Hiccup (Jay Baruchel).
Hiccup is someone far more familiar to Hollywood. Shoulders scrunched, irony needle on full, he’s the peeved 21st century kid who floats through popular culture on a bubble that he’d naturally prefer to burst. 'I’m really very extra sure that I won’t," he dryly replies when it’s suggested that he begin studies in dragon fighting, the leading subject for his village’s youngsters. As seen in the opening scene, dragons regularly descend on Hiccup’s locale to steal and destroy, although the boy is usually banished to the blacksmith’s hut while his imposing father, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler, playing up his Scottish accent), leads the defensive action.
Stoick, like the rest of his compatriots, has a great flowing beard that alone, makes the 3D glasses worth using. The visual style is surprisingly modern, with lovely eye detail, recalling the cartoons made for digital pop group The Gorillaz. Hiccup and his young cohorts – including the Jack Black rip-off Snotlout (Jonah Hill) – bounce around their training arena, with truncated limbs supporting stout torsos; the elongated exception being Hiccup and his blonde love interest/rival Astrid (America Ferrera).
Having flukily caught the Night Fury, which he then befriends, heals and names Toothless, Hiccup learns how to subdue, instead of slay, the various creatures he’s studying. The movie’s underlying theme is that intelligence and understanding will win out over brute strength, and the story takes it to unexpected depths even as it bounces along through blustery gags and tidy visuals.
Hiccup realises that the dragons aren’t as fearsome as seven generations of Vikings have previously believed. 'Everything we know about you is wrong," he confesses to Toothless, which is an interesting proposition at a time when America is engaged in foreign wars and embracing xenophobia. But How to Train Your Dragon never overplays its hand: it’s a brisk, amusing piece that doesn’t have the weary sarcasm that besets a Shark Tale or Kung Fu Panda. Who needs a plastic toy and plastic meal when you have a genuinely good movie?
