Review: How To Train Your Dragon

I saw the trailer of the movie twice, once at The Princess and the Frog and once at Avatar, I instantly said I want to watch it on 3-D because it is cool and it's funny. I know nothing about the release date of the movie until Atles called me on MSN asked whether I wanna watch, I just say hell yeah, let's go!!!

I am genuinely impressed by the movie after I watched it. For the past decade or more, animation genre has been dominated by one company, that is Pixar, who brought us Up, Finding Nemo, Wall-E, and many more other great animations that are loved by gazillions of people worldwide. Now, Dreamworks Animation has a gem to put their place as one of them, that is How to Train Your Dragon.

When the movie title started to come it, even the logo itself has a lot of 3-D effects into it. The 3-D effects of the movie is just astonishing (No... No, no... Please don't think of Avatar, Please). With the animation of the action sequence and dragon's models and the 3-D effects. The visual is just a pleasant to watch, as simple as that.

The story is pretty simple really. It's in a world about a war between the Vikings and the Dragon, the lead character Hiccup, is a vikings who wants to be a warrior to fight with the dragons but failed to do so. He is also an intelligent person among the Vikings and the tribes consider him an outsider. I love the way that the story was told, it was like the way Up told the story, explains stuff at the beginning, except this is much more simpler and much more action packed than Up. You can easily follow the characters' developments and the story development itself.

I also see this as a successful attempt of Dreamworks to get over it's identity crisis. For many many years already, Dreamworks target young audiences, just like Pixar do, but their animation suggest that they are targeting for adults, the biggest offender is Shark Tale, which for my book the worst animation ever made. Same goes for Monsters vs. Aliens and Madagascar, while it is hilarious, the jokes and those funny moments are meant for adults. How to Train Your Dragon is simple, will please kids (boys and girls alike) and family will enjoy watching together.

Summary: How to Train Your Dragon is might be the reason why you watch animation at the first place. Short and clear explaination of characters, cute moments and great animation effects... Even I know Pixar got the talent to beat any animation movies, this one will give a tough fight to Toy Story 3.

Verdict: 5/5