Yes, I liked this movie better than Up. Now that THAT'S out of the way...
The great thing about this movie is that while it takes on such lofty subjects as acceptance, parent/child relationships, killing things rather than befriending them and even believing in your self - it manages to make them heartwarming rather than jarring. Unlike OTHER animated "classics" that I have reviewed recently, this movie bring charm, a sense of wonder and a great message.
Wannabe viking Hiccup can't seem to do anything right when it comes to killing dragons. Even when he manages to accidentally capture one in his super-cool-dragon-catching-contraption, he can't bring himself to do anything other than let the dragon go. And then go back and check on it. And then feed it. And then figure out why it can't fly anymore (it's injured). And then create an adaptive device to help train the dragon how to fly again.
In the middle of this friendship between a boy and his dragon, the boy learns all about dragons - how to live beside them with respect and mutual appreciation. Even when the other vikings take advantage of what he has learned, they still manage to leverage what he learned in order to design an era of peace so that they can all live together. I guess this would be the moment where I could wax poetic about how this had some sort of "inside meaning" for people who have lived through scrutiny or public humiliation for believing in something that is unpopular, but I think I will just end this by saying that the movie deserved more credit than it got. It was everything a classic animated movie should be.
The IMDB Link
It got a lot of credit! It was one of the best, critically reviewed and publicly lauded films of last year and rightly so! It is pure magic. (And don't forget the wonderful message about overcoming handicaps that comes in the final minutes).
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