How To Train Your Dragon

Colby finally came through! After several bait and switch suggestions that we would be watching How To Train Your Dragon, we watched it tonight. It was fun. The storyline was recognizable and simple (which is a good thing if you're watching a movie with Colby!), and the animation, as far as I could tell, was well done, even beautiful at times - I particularly liked the scenes with the vast moonlit ocean in the background (though those scenes were also the corniest).

I really don't know how to review an American-made animated feature, as compared to a live-action feature, or even compared to Japanese Anime. Are the standards different? It kind of feels that way. That is, the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes (98%) and IMDB (8.2/10) are so over-the-top positive that I can't figure it out. I mean this isn't a bad movie, but it's not a great one. It's not innovative in anyway that I can see. It's pretty, and technically well-executed, but the story isn't worth much of a mention as being compelling or imaginative. 

Here's a list of some of the hacked tropes it includes: misunderstood, underdog son/hero; bombastic, unfeeling, violent, jerkface father; huge, odd-duck, mishapen sidekick (the Hagrid factor); the cute girl who finally understands; the bullies who finally understand; the creatures of the natural world misunderstood as hateful and dangerous, but actually loving ... except for that spawn of evil which lurks deep in the belly of the Earth (oh the conflictedness of it - to love the Earth or fear it - which will it be?); the "it all comes together in the end" ending. There are more. I won't mention the visually stereotypes of comfort (the warm lights of home) and dazzle (the crazy firefights) that abound here.  

There are also several missed opportunities of interesting revisions of the above tropes: a female hero? (why not?); a father and a mother that care, even if they're misguided (what the heck is going on with the lack of fully-formed two-parent families in animated films? - thank you Lion King and Coraline!); let's have all the children be less easily co-opted into the adult agenda (like Super 8). 

Anyway, as far as I'm interested in animated feature films, I will continue to pay attention to anime pieces like Princess Mononoke & Tekkonkinkreet. These movies stand alone as mature pieces of art and need not be treated with the kid gloves like most American animated features. The closest a Hollywood animated feature has come to compelling is the first 30 minutes of Wall-E, and that section of the film does it without dialogue! By the way, aren't voices done by "stars" one of the more problematic aspects of animation? Here the Viking father speaks in a Scottish brogue (Gerard Butler), while his son speaks a kind of slacker middle-Americanese (Jay Baruchel). Why?

That's enough. We had a good time with Colby. The movie entertained us. That was certainly sufficient for tonight. I'll stop with my griping already.

Ride report

in:       -10'C wind 20 ks N

out:    -11'C wind  12 ks N