SYOPSIS: in “How to Train Your Dragon,” a new live-action remake of the 2010 animated film of the same name, a young Viking boy named Hiccup goes against his village’s traditional belief that dragons are “the unholy offspring of lightning and death itself,” when he befriends a Night Fury dragon named Toothless. “Dad, I can’t kill dragons,” Hiccup admits to his father, Stoick the Vast.
CAST: Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Nick Frost, Julian Dennison, Gabriel Howell, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Ruth Codd, Peter Serafinowicz, Murray McArthur, Gerard Butler. Written and directed by Dean DeBlois.
REVIEW: At the movies, it seems that everything old is new again.
Even if it’s not that old.
It was just 15 years ago that the animated “How to Train Your Dragon,” based on the 2003 novel by Cressida Cowell, earned two Oscar nominations and launched a franchise that includes sequels, short films, a television series, a video game and an arena show adaptation featuring 24 animatronic dragons.
This weekend it gets a live-action treatment that includes all the familiar characters, situations plus 27 brand new minutes of story.
It’s new, but it isn’t necessarily improved.
On the plus side Canadian director and writer Dean DeBlois, who has been involved with the franchise as a director since the first film, brings a darker tone to the story. It’s still family friendly (although the finale with the Queen Dragon may haunt younger viewers) but the live action brings with it more exciting aerial action scenes, even if the CGI is sometimes murky in the big sequences.
It also adds complexity to the characters, particularly in the relationship between Hiccup (a terrific Mason Thames) and his father (Gerard Butler, who returns from the animated films).
Also welcome is the return of the emotional core of the original. The animated film’s allegory to 9/11 feels even more poignant today as a message of tolerance. As Hiccup cuts through his father’s Viking jingoism with kindness and compassion, the movie reverberates with the franchise’s humanistic themes.
The heart of the film, the relationship between the boy and his dragon, beats loudly. Thames is up against it, reinterpreting Jay Baruchel’s classic voice work, but he brings an earnestness to the character that works.
Toothless the friendly dragon is lovingly rendered in photorealistic CGI, and even with no dialogue, expresses himself as easily as any of the real-life actors.
On the downside, it feels been-there-done-that. Several scenes are shot-for-shot from the original, which, depending on your level of fandom, will either be an homage or a display of a lack of originality.
“How to Train Your Dragon” will likely entertain original fans, and may win over some new ones, but I missed the snappier pacing of the original. The extra 27 minutes brings with it some impressive look-at-me moments—particularly in the final battle scene—but I found it less charming than it animated counterpart.
Check out episode twenty-six of Richard’s web series, “In Isolation With…” It’s the talk show where we make a connection without actually making contact! Today, broadcasting directly from Isolation Studios (a.k.a. my home office) we meet Jay Baruchel. He’s been acting since the age of twelve and has appeared in everything from “Knocked Up” and “Tropic Thunder” to “The Trotsky” and “She’s Out of My League” to the action-fantasy “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and “This Is the End.” He’s probably best known as the voice of Hiccup in the wildly successful “How to Train Your Dragon” franchise but he says, despite all the success in front of the camera, what he really wants to do is direct.
“I was really lucky in that my parents would give me a kind of film or music 101,” he says in the interview. “Whenever they would tell me something they would explain why it matters. Why they care about it. What the landscape that it came out in was like and then, of course ,then they would get into sort of inside jokes. They also showed me “Monty Python the Holy Grail” and pause after every punch line and be like, ‘Do you understand why that’s funny?’ This is called dry humor. Literally. Verbatim. This is called dry humour. Then dad bought me “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” on VHS for my ninth birthday. And that started my collection that I’m still crippled by because I still buy physical media. But I’ve never stopped. Somewhere in there I realized that as much as I adore writing stories, I realized that movies were the thing.”
Two years ago he wrote and directed the sports comedy “Goon: Last of the Enforcers.” Now he appears both in front of and behind the camera in “Random Acts of Violence,” a genre film that asks serious questions about how we relate to violence in art.
Based on a 2008 Image Comic, “Random Acts of Violence” begins with comic book writer Todd (Jesse Williams) suffering a case of writer’s block. His series, a grisly and successful adaptation of a real-life serial killer dubbed Slasherman, is coming to an end and he doesn’t know how to wind it down.
On a press tour from Toronto to New York to promote the final issue, Jesse and friends, visit the scene of the Slasherman’s crimes. As the group fall victim to a series of heinous copycat crimes the film asks, “What are the real consequences when life (and death) begin to imitate art?”
I talk about that with Jay in this interview but we started by reminiscing about the “beforetime” when we could go to the movies. I asked him what movie memories stand out for him when he thinks back to the theatre experience…
NOTE: The language in this interview is NOT suitable for all age. NSFW!
Watch the whole thing HERE on YouTube or HERE on ctvnews.ca!
This week on “Pop Life” Richard chats with Jay Baruchel’s about where his love of the Habs came from. The Canadian “How to Train Your Dragon” actor and author speaks about this and more.
Watch the full episode of “Pop Life” from Saturday November 3, 2018. This week Richard speaks to best-selling author of the ‘How to Train Your Dragon’ and ‘Wizards of Once’ books Cressida Cowell about the world of magic and firing up the imagination of young readers. Then the Pop Life panel, Magicienne Julie Eng, cinema alchemist Roger Christian and Harry Potter fan Lauren McCormick, speak about the art of illusions in magic, on film sets and more.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including musician Josh Groban, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, legendary rock star Meatloaf, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actor Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
This week on “Pop Life” Richard chats with best-selling author Cressida Cowell about the world of magic and firing up the imagination of young readers.
Film critic and pop culture historian Richard Crouse shares a toast with celebrity guests and entertainment pundits every week on CTV News Channel’s talk show POP LIFE.
Featuring in-depth discussion and debate on pop culture and modern life, POP LIFE features sit-down interviews with celebrities from across the entertainment world, including musician Josh Groban, comedian Ken Jeong, writer Fran Lebowitz, superstar jazz musician Diana Krall, legendary rock star Meatloaf, stand-up comedian and CNN host W. Kamau Bell, actor Jay Baruchel, celebrity chefs Bobby Flay and Nigella Lawson, and many more.
“How to Train Your Dragon,” the story of a kind hearted Viking boy who becomes a Dragon Whisperer, is one of the best animated films yet from Dreamworks, home of “Shrek” and “Madagascar”. It will likely engage audiences of young kids (But no tots please! It’s too intense) and their willing parents, but as good as it is it still doesn’t come close to the lyrical beauty of a Pixar film.
Based on the kid’s books by Cressida Cowell, Jay Baruchel stars as Hiccup, a skinny outcast in his remote Viking village, located, as he says, “in the meridian of misery.” Killing a dragon is “everything” around there but he is too young, too inexperienced and too clumsy to be of much use as a dragon hunter. To make up for his lack of prowess he develops a sling shot that should be able to fell the dreaded Night Fury, a winged beast described as the “unholy off spring of lightening and death itself.” Low and behold, it works, but when he captures one of the creatures he discovers two things. One, he can’t bring himself to kill the dragon, and two, the dragons aren’t the fearful creatures everyone thinks they are.
“How to Train Your Dragon” differs from “Shrek” and other Dreamworks offerings in that it is an action adventure first and a comedy second. Gone are the pop culture references that populate (and instantly date) the scripts of “Shrek” and “A Shark’s Tale.” They’ve been replaced by well executed action scenes and an underdog story that uses humor to accentuate the story, not dominate it.
Scenes of Hiccup riding Toothless, his domesticated dragon, are a step toward Pixar territory for Dreamworks. They are marvelously rendered in thrilling 3D and wouldn’t look too out of place in “Avatar.” The three dimensional work in those scenes is lovely, but doesn’t add much to the earth bound sequences. The village scenes have depth but no eye popping effects.
As usual for this kind of animated feature celebrity voices dominate the voice work. Gerard Butler and Craig Ferguson play the elder Vikings with vigorous Scottish accents, and Jonah Hill brings some fun to Snotlout even though his character is a dead ringer for a young Jack Black, but Baruchel brings the heart and soul to the film. His nasally twang is easy on the ear and perfectly suits the nebbishy character who thinks that if he kills a dragon he’ll get a girlfriend.
“How to Train Your Dragon” has some good messages for kids about not judging a book by its cover and several rousing action sequences. It’s not Pixar good but it is a leap in the right direction for Dreamworks.
SYOPSIS: in “How to Train Your Dragon,” a new live-action remake of the 2010 animated film of the same name, a young Viking boy named Hiccup goes against his village’s traditional belief that dragons are “the unholy offspring of lightning and death itself,” when he befriends a Night Fury dragon named Toothless. “Dad, I can’t kill dragons,” Hiccup admits to his father, Stoick the Vast.
