How to Train Your Dragon

How to Train Your Dragon features a very standard plot for a children’s movie. There’s the kid who doesn’t really fit in with everybody else but believes that maybe he has a bigger purpose, and then, sure enough, he does and saves the day! In this case, the misfit kid is a Viking who is skinny and weak and doesn’t have the same abilities as all his fellow villagers when it comes to fighting off hordes of invading dragons. But when he befriends a dragon, he learns that dragons aren’t so bad after all, and he and his new pal teach everybody a valuable lesson.

On a whole, this movie was enjoyable, but it also left me somehow disappointed. Maybe the reason for that is simply that I’ve come to expect a lot of animated movies in recent years. Pixar keeps putting out amazing films, and though I haven’t seen the latest Shrek, those are all a ton of fun too. But I suppose as the animation gets better or easier to do or whatever, as more studios are putting out CGI animated movies anyway, the overall quality goes down a little bit. Some of them are thrown together too quickly. I can’t really accuse How to Train Your Dragon of being tossed together without care because it is well made. The dragons are cool, there are many funny parts, but still . . .

Another one that I was a little disappointed in was Despicable Me. It had plenty of funny parts and was cute overall, but I just somehow expected more of it. And the same was true of How to Train Your Dragon. I’d basically recommend it. If I had kids, I’m sure I’d buy the DVD and watch it with them regularly. And, really, I have no actual complaints about it other than just a vague wish that it was a little better than it is.

Maybe once again it comes down to expectations. When I watched Predators, I was expecting a lame sci fi action flick, and I got exactly what I expected, so I enjoyed it. With How to Train Your Dragon, I had heard that it was fantastic, and I expected a movie comparable to the stuff that Pixar is producing, but that isn’t quite what I got. Had I expected a lame, cheap, poorly written animated movie, I probably would have been pleasantly surprised and would highly recommend it to everybody. It’s strange how much difference expectations make.