Word: hiccuped
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...Aboard the Dragon Train Fun is the first of the goals set by Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, Dragon's directors and (with Will Davies) writers, for their version of the Cressida Cowell book. Their teen hero, Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel from She's Out of My League), is the underachieving son of a fierce Viking warlord, Stoick (300's very own Gerard Butler), whose tribe has been battling dragons for centuries. When Hiccup wounds an elusive creature called the Night Fury, no one believes him. Soon he tames, trains and learns to ride the beast, thus schooling...
This is the rare DreamWorks movie that might have benefited from a few more gag writers. Its early reels rely too heavily on the conceit that medieval Norsemen spoke with a Scots accent, and the other teens in Hiccup's dragon-training class never surmount their stereotypes. But Sanders and DeBlois, two Disney vets who told a similar kid-and-feral-pet fable in 2002's Lilo & Stitch, have the knack of giving life to fantastical interspecies friendships. And the technicians at their disposal (including the Coen brothers' ace cinematographer, Roger Deakins) have splashed the screen with landscapes that would...
...secondary cast, including Gerard Butler (as Hiccup’s dad, Stoick) and America Ferrera (as tomgirl Astrid, whom Hiccup wins over), acquit themselves admirably. Perhaps the most inspired supporting performance comes from the ever-dependable Craig Ferguson, who voices Hiccup’s mentor Gobber, a character who says everything mentor characters are never supposed to say in movies, thus providing some of the film’s best laughs. At one point, when Hiccup complains how he can’t help that he wasn’t born with the beefy physique of his father, Gobber helpfully...
...bombast, though, what carries “How to Train Your Dragon” is the dialogue written for its characters and handed off to a superb cast. Baruchel plays the self-deprecating misfit Hiccup as though he’s talking to the audience, and not the characters on the screen. In this way, he pulls the viewer into his confidence, and both find themselves the only sane people in a village of blood-crazed Vikings...
...pays off. The movie never feels like watching someone else play a video game. Instead, “How to Train Your Dragon” takes a classic and clichéd Hollywood storyline and makes it memorable. This is most evident in the wondrous scenes in which Toothless, Hiccup, and Astrid soar through the sunset to the beautiful Celtic-inspired score of John Powell. Viewers may recall a very similar CGI experience in “Avatar,” in which flying beasts streak the sky in symbiotic unity with their mounted protagonists. The difference...