How does the saying go? You can’t teach an old dragon new tricks? That’s the actuality behind “How to Train Your Dragon 2”, which models off the original “How to Train Your Dragon” in many ways and yet does so without losing any of the original’s surprising quality.
Dreamworks’s film was the first since “Shrek” that had both real humor and heart. It was a gorgeous example of what 3-D could do, it captured some of the breathtaking spectacle behind “Avatar” and put it into a kids’ film and it even included an adorable wordless montage that could plausibly be talked about in the same breath as the one from “Up.” Those more tranquil moments made the epic dragon battle in its finale more significant and tolerable.
“HTTYD 2” is a bit more action heavy and a bit lighter on the charm that made the first film a hit. All the training has been done, and now a bigger fight is about to begin. And yet Dean DeBlois’s film (he co-directed the original) uses the same structure that slowly brought out the original’s best qualities.
It begins on fairly standard madcap comedy terms with a few fast-paced fart jokes and punched up dialogue to fill the air, then settles in on Hiccup (Jay Baruchel). He and his dragon Toothless have now become daring explorers, cartographers and expert fliers with all of his home town having now adopted dragons of their own. We see Hiccup much less timid and scrawny than the first film, donning tough looking flight gear, diving off his dragon to engage his own flying apparatus and doing some exotic acrobatics with a nifty flame sword.
After learning of a threat by Drago Bloodfist to start a war with his army of dragons, Hiccup ventures off to find Drago and sway him to peace. But he stumbles across a dragon hovel along the way and meets for the first time his long disappeared mother (Cate Blanchett). It’s here the movie hits its stride just as it did the first time around, with the images getting more imaginative, the camera getting more elegant and the film getting more tranquil on the whole.
It’s frankly lovely, and just as before it builds to a climax of a dragon war that feels convincingly grand, noble and highly staked. Major tentpole live action films might even want to look to “How To Train Your Dragon 2” to see how to raise the danger, imagination and energy of their titanic battles for the fate of the world.
Much of what’s so refreshing about the film is how lovely the animation is. Dreamworks has stepped up their game, sparing no detail in imagining dozens of species of dragon, no one looking remotely the same. The film’s alive with colors, but it even finds fascinating moments in the dark, like when Hiccup dances with his flame sword to enchant and tame a few encroaching wild dragons.
And yet you wonder why the film can’t have more of these moments. Are kids truly captivated by the zany action and dialogue moving at breakneck pace? Is there not more room for the dragon/boy camaraderie that felt so endearing the first time around?
We see an early scene of Hiccup and Toothless playing around and a few more small moments of real beauty, but “How to Train Your Dragon 2” has few new tricks.
3 stars
It’s a bit better than the first. However, they’re both pretty fantastic movies in their own rights. Good review.