How to Train Your Dragon

Title: How to Train Your Dragon

Director: Chris Sanders and Dean deBlois

Studio: DreamWorks Animation Studios

Actors: Jay Baruchel, America Ferrera, Gerard Butler, Craig Ferguson

Viewer's Rating: 4

Excerpt: "This is Berk. It snows nine months out of the year, and hails the other three. What little food grows here is tough and tasteless. The people that grow here, even more so. The only upsides are the pets. While other places have ponies, or parrots... we have dragons"

In a Nutshell: Hiccup is a gawky teenager in the world of Vikings. While everyone around him is big and beefy, he’s a talking fishbone. While everyone around him is fighting dragons, he’s given a job at the armory instead. Hiccup wants more than anything to make his dad (who happens to be the chief of the village, by the way) proud. But to do that, he must pass Dragon School and kill a dragon with his bare hands. As he’s thin and weak, he obviously doesn’t stand a chance. Until he meets a Night Fury, a kind of dragon no one’s ever killed—or even seen—before, supposedly the most dangerous dragon. He ends up befriending it and naming it “Toothless.” Hiccup passes Dragon School by using techniques he learned while studying and playing with Toothless. He even finds out a shocking surprise that no one has ever discovered about dragons before.

The Good Stuff: How to Train Your Dragon is a movie you’ll want to watch over and over again! The story is very nice. It’s the kind of movie the whole family will enjoy, not just the kids. It’s kind of heart warming in a way.

The Not-So-Good-Stuff: There’s a kissing scene (gosh, does every movie have to have one?!). Totally inappropriate! I also don’t approve of Hiccup’s dad’s parenting skills. Haha.

Viewer's Say: As I took my seat in the theatre where I first watched the movie, I thought it was going to be just another movie—you know, typical story, typical characters, happy ending, blah blah blah. It may be that How to Train Your Dragon is that kind of story, but I really enjoyed watching it. It turned out to be a bit different from the other stories. It’s action-packed, touching, heart-warming, and very funny! Hiccup is awesome and so are the dragons.