No one can deny that “How to Train Your Dragon” is a good-looking film, even if people are tired of watching movies with 3-D glasses.
Try as they might, audiences can’t fight the fact that 3-D cinema is quickly becoming the future for blockbusters, and “How to Train Your Dragon” is a glimpse of what the technology can do in the hands of the right people.
While the visuals pull audiences into the fantasy world from the minds of DreamWorks, the script sags. It focuses on Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), a young Viking of the village of Burk, who wants to be a dragon slayer. Baruchel finds a balance between awkward and confident as Hiccup.
There are plot holes in the story, though. For example, the film never explains how the civilization continues to prosper despite the fact that there are nightly dragon attacks.
“How to Train Your Dragon” isn’t a film designed for scholarly analysis, but its concept of one man attempting to change the ideology of his culture could have led to notable possibilities. Instead, the script fails to forge a strong emotional connection with its audience.
This film demonstrates why DreamWorks continues to lag behind Pixar in terms of storytelling and characters. And if 3-D technology continues to leech importance from the script, perhaps three dimensions are one too many.
“How to Train Your Dragon” was written and directed by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders.