How to Train Your Dragon 2 Review
Well trained.
When you see every movie the week it comes out upon occasion you encounter a confluence of bad movie scheduling wherein you have seen everything that interests you and nothing comes out that seems worth the photons burned projecting the film from the screen to your eyeballs. This weekend looks pretty awful, with Think Like a Man (22% on Rotten Tomatoes) and Jersey Boys (56%, but the trailers make this film look like my worst nightmare. I have zero interest in the Four Seasons and actors talking to the camera is one of my personal grinds. Unless your name is Deadpool the 4th wall is there for a reason). I will see them both this weekend but couldn’t find the motivation to see a early late night showing last night.
Fortunately there is always my old friend the animated feature to fall back on. I did not see the previous How to Train Your Dragon. I wasn’t doing reviews back then. However I seem to stumble across it every time I write something else as pretty much every celebrity in Hollywood seems to have done a voice for it. I don’t really feel the need to see it as my point that any film should stand on its own without a prerequisite stands doubly true for kids films as a lot of the audience in 2014 were at best in diapers back in 2010. If I feel lost watching a sequel to an animated film for the lack of the first one then the creators are on the fail boat for sure.
Thus I must deem this film a success. The relevant points from the first film (dragons used to be bad but were tamed by the main character and are now friendly and happy domestic creatures who fly and breath fire) was communicated relatively seamlessly, leaving us with a coherent story and some great characters. I thought at first I was going to hate Hiccup, the main character buecause he’s kind of a skinny young metrosexual wimp and his name is Hiccup (the trend these days seems to be to keep male leads in all movies as androgynous as possible in order to hide that fact that men sometimes have penises and the desire to use them. Sure seems like every girl I go out with has had that fact hidden from them) but then I realized he is actually pretty cool, has a mechanical leg, a flaming sword, and a really cool dragon to fly around on.
Toothless the dragon was of course my favorite character. He’s like a puppy who flies and can shoot off balls of fire. He looks a lot like a cute bat. You really can’t help but fall in love with him. The rest of the dragons range from kind of cool to flying jokes and most of the rest of the humans I couldn’t have cared less if they all fell into a volcano (including 100% of Hiccups posse. They all sucked). The movie did have its flaws, starting with most of the humans being too deep in the uncanny valley and ending with the extensive abundance of comedy relief in a film that is mostly comedy. However, I enjoyed it for the most part and the kids in the audience were going berserk so I have to call this one a win.
The story is of young Hiccup (Jay Baruchel-This is the End, Tropic Thunder, Goon (<–very underrated movie IMO)) and his pet dragon Toothless (the teeth actually retract), a dragon rider, inventor, and heir to the throne of Berk, a Viking village on an island who’s main industries seem to be sheep and rocks. He has a crew of dragon and dragon riding dorks with assorted names like Belch and Ug. His father is Stoick (Gerard Butler-Playing for Keeps, Rocknrolla, Olympus has Fallen), a guy who fell off the Viking stereotype tree and hit ever branch except for the one that makes him long for battle and bloodshed. Hiccup has a hot fiance in Astrid (America Ferrera-End of Watch, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Ugly Betty) who is also a dragon rider.
They seem to all spend their time flying around on dragons and not working. Hiccup likes to go exploring and while out gets attacked by dragon hunters let by the only other human character I liked, Eret (Kit Harington-Pompeii, Game of Thrones, Silent Hill: Revelation 3D). He gets away from Eret with Astrid’s help but learns of Drago, a man who is collecting dragons into an army. Drago (Djimon Hounsou-Blood Diamond, the Island, Constantine) hates dragons but has control of them through a super dragon called the Alpha (wasn’t Godzilla called the Alpha predator in the last movie?).
I’m going to flash the rest of the story as I saw it a week ago and am having a hard time remembering (it’s also late and my yoga class kicked my ass. Now I need to go home and look for my testicles). Drago rebukes Hiccups attempts and a peace deal and attacks. A giant dragon may or may not have been killed in the fight, although Stoick definitely was (I guess that’s where the PG rating came from). Hiccup finds his long lost mother who abandoned him to live with the dragons like a dragon Jane Goodall. The whole thing wraps up in a typical animated kid movie happy ending (Akira this is not).
I don’t do stars and black holes for kids movies. I base my assessment on how the kids were acting in the theater (from my creepy single guy too old to be in this theater solo bubble) and in my opinion they were loving it. A good movie for kids. A mediocre movie for adults. Not a lot of good clever humor. It kind of tanked at the box office and I assume this is a big part of it. Some of the visuals were amazing, with the best CGI $145,000,000 can buy done by computer guys who secretly wish they were working as a DJ at a strip club (or so I assume), but once you get over the oooh and aaah factor of the cinematography it tends to be a pretty rote experience. Competently done and worth your kids time, but don’t be surprised if you feel the temptation to bunk out and watch an episode of Walking Dead on your phone in the lobby. Most of the posts I see by consumers says it wasn’t as good as the first one so take that for what you will. 
Date movie? Sure, why not. If your date has ever had a poster of a unicorn on her wall like this one from our novelty t shirt collection she will appreciate the fantastical nature of the dragons as pets. If not odds are she will think you a massive nerd anyway so it’s not like you are doing any more damage. Bathroom break? There is a painfully long sequence after Hiccup finds his mother where she is explaining the nature of dragons that I wish I had the time back from so I’d say go then.
Thanks for reading. I’ll see these two other movies this weekend and write them up. Not looking forward to either to be honest. Follow me on Twitter @Nerdkungfu. Comments on this film can be left here and off topic questions or suggestions can be emailed to [email protected]. Talk to you soon.
the Infamous Dave Inman
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