How to Train Your Dragon

When I first heard of this movie, all I knew about it was what I could glean from the poster displayed at the theater. (In other words, not much.) I had zero interest in seeing it, based on the ad. But once the movie came out, I started hearing good things about it from everyone who went to see it. In fact, one person I know thought it was even better than Avatar. Still not knowing anything about the plot, my interest was piqued. And of course my kids wanted to go see it. They'll take just about any excuse for a trip to the movie theater, as long as it doesn't involve sparkly vampires. (S'okay, they're too young for such stuff anyway).

I definitely give this movie two thumbs up. Fun, funny, and a great story. Most of the time the computer animation is excellent, though at the beginning of the movie the beards of the vikings got on my nerves. They seemed to exist in a nether-world between realistic-looking hair and an acceptably stylized cartoon portrayal, but happily the absorbing story eclipsed my facial hair worries and I forgot all about them. Well, until the end, anyway. At least the hair wasn't bad enough to ruin the movie for me. And they more than made up for bad hair with awesome eyeballs! Dreamworks did a great job getting those eyes to look liquid and alive, and the way the light sometimes gleamed on them was amazing.

Lots of times during animated movies I am distracted by trying to identify voices I recognize, so it was kind of nice that most of the voices sounded unfamiliar to me (although when I looked the actors up online afterwards, I was surprised that Gerard Butler, American Ferrera and Kristen Wiig hadn't sounded familiar to me). At first I thought I recognized the main character's voice, but it didn't take long to figure out it just sounded a lot (but not quite) like Christian Slater.

Oddly enough, the characters' faces actually seemed more familiar than their voices. I thought Snotlout totally looked like Jack Black. Ruffnut and Tuffnut each reminded me of someone but I haven't yet figured out who. And I spent nearly the entire movie thinking Toothless must look like some kind of Pokémon or something because he looked so familiar (although why I thought a Pokémon might look familiar to me, I have no idea), but it hit me at the end: Stitch. I thought Toothless looked a lot like Stitch. I mean, not so much that you'd mistake one for the other, obviously. But their faces are similar, and they have the same legs.

If you have kids (or you are one), go see it! We saw the 2D version (it's cheaper, especially when you're carting 3 kids around) and it was great, so I'm thinking seeing it in 3D isn't necessary.