Young hero in the making trying to prove himself. A father who doesn’t believe in him. The bond of a young hero and his enemy. And a young anachronistic heroine who helps the hero find himself. We’ve seen it all before and then some, but thankfully with “How to Train your Dragon” is handled the formula so well, it’s almost original and unique. Almost. Dreamworks’ animated action adventure film is your classic boy and dog story, except the boy finds his man’s best friend in his purported enemy, a young dragon who forms a common ground with him in a world where humans and dragons are eternally grappling at war with one another and are told they must do battle.
One of the finer points of “How to Train Your Dragon” is that the film is centered on a young man named Hiccup who figures out how to train dragons when he meets an injured black dragon in the forest one day and builds an eternal friendship with it. What comes with training is more based around facial gestures and hand movement rather than clubbing us over the head with commands, and director Dean DeBlois, and Chris Sanders center the ideals of storytelling around such a notion when Hiccup figures out how to best Dragons without hurting them, which leads to some of the most breathtaking moments of storytelling I’ve seen in 2010.
Most of the friendship between Hiccup and the dragon he calls toothless is abundant with idiosyncrasies and non-verbal communication that brings them closer and closer together the more hiccup realizes he can best this young dragon by coming to an understanding with it instead of hurting it. This is an instant plea for friendship by the dragon who forms a companionship with Hiccup when he learns that the young man is not intent on hurting so much as he is on co-existing. When the two reach that crescendo of mutual agreement, the sky is the limit toward characterization where Hiccup becomes a thinking man’s hero, while his friend the black dragon is his partner more than his goofy pet. While the first ten minutes opt for pure sensory overload, “How to Train your Dragon” is much more story-centric and immensely less clumsily put together than Dreamworks’ cash cow “Shrek.”
The film opts instead for nods to Celtic and Norse mythology to provide the themes for its landscape and root for characters rather than anachronistic pop culture references. Star Baruchel adds a needed humility to the young protagonist Hiccup offering a humanity that most actors only dream of injecting. All the while folks like America Ferrerra, Jonah Hill, and Gerard Butler compliment the character piece, giving the film its youthful tone without pandering to its target demographic. And once the film manages to find its footing as Dreamworks most sophisticated outing to date, it prefers to tell the audience a wonderful story instead of talk down to them and sugar coat its themes of life, death, irony, and love. What “How to Train your Dragon” ultimately becomes by the second half is a story about understanding and racial unity where the dragons act as a symbol for the minority race, and the Vikings, the white supremacy.
And Hiccup figures out before everyone else that if they can learn to understand and live and let live, perhaps there can finally be peace in the land around them. But how do you change a society built on the notion that its primary purpose it to extinguish all that oppose or hope to co-exist with them? That becomes the conflict for Hiccup. Neck and neck with “Toy Story 3” as the finest animated film of 2010, “How to Train your Dragon” is undeserving of the Dreamworks stigma as it’s one of their most sophisticated and beautifully told action fantasy films free of the pop culture pabulum and excess and centered solely on telling a sharp story with characters we can actually care for at the end of the day. A finely tuned and intelligent film for the kids, “How to Train Your Dragon” is proof Dreamworks is capable of delivering something other than juvenile nonsense.