PREVIEW: VIKING BRATS AND THEIR OVERGROWN LIZARDS RETURN FOR ONE LAST FLY-BY
Get your earplugs and your tissues ready because the folks at DreamWorks are finally putting this dragon business to bed. In How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World, we find our hero Hiccup (a name that still sounds like a digestive problem) trying to run a village that has more reptiles than a Florida retirement home. It is supposed to be a paradise, but it looks more like a cluttered basement that hasn’t been cleaned since the Nixon administration.
The plot kicks into gear when a nasty hunter named Grimmel shows up wanting to finish off the last of the “Night Furies.” Meanwhile, Hiccup’s dragon, Toothless, gets a girlfriend who looks like a piece of unflavored saltwater taffy. It is all leading up to a big goodbye that the studio hopes will make you forget how much you spent on popcorn and soda. If you have kids, they will probably drag you to this, so just be prepared for a lot of glowing colors and emotional manipulation.
REVIEW BY BEN DOVER
I sat down to watch this thing on my television the other night and let me tell you my back still hurts from the experience. This is the third movie in a series about Vikings who apparently stopped being manly warriors so they could become full-time pet sitters. Hiccup is the chief now, but he still sounds like a kid who would get his lunch money stolen at a bus stop. He is obsessed with saving dragons, which is fine I guess, but maybe he should spend some time fixing the roofs in his village instead of flying around in leather pajamas.
The big draw here is that Toothless finds a “Light Fury,” which is just a white version of him. They spend about twenty minutes doing a mating dance that looked like two pigeons fighting over a French fry. I do not understand why we needed a nature documentary in the middle of my Viking movie. And the kids today think this is “romantic.” Back in my day, romance was taking a girl to a drive-in and hoping your car didn’t break down on the way home. We didn’t need glowing caves and silent dancing to get the point across.
Now, I will admit the movie looks expensive. Everything is shiny and the water looks so real I almost reached for a towel. But then you have the “Hidden World” itself, which looks like someone threw a bunch of neon glow-sticks into a blender. It gave me a headache. And don’t get me started on the side characters. There is a pair of twins who just scream at each other the whole time. I have neighbors like that and I usually call the cops on them, I don’t pay ten dollars to hear them yell in surround sound.
The bad guy, Grimmel, is voiced by that fellow F. Murray Abraham. He sounds very serious, but his plan is basically just being a jerk because he can. He has these dragons that he drugged into submission, which seems like a lot of work when he could just get a hobby. The whole movie builds up to this big “goodbye” because dragons and humans can’t get along. I could have told them that in the first movie and saved everyone nine years of waiting. It is a decent enough ending, but it’s awfully mushy for a movie about Vikings.
STARS AND PRODUCTION
- Jay Baruchel as Hiccup: Still sounds like he needs a lozenge. He’s the chief now, but he has the authority of a substitute teacher.
- America Ferrera as Astrid: The only one in this whole movie who seems like she could actually win a fight.
- F. Murray Abraham as Grimmel: A very snooty villain who takes way too much pride in being a pest control officer.
- Cate Blanchett as Valka: Hiccup’s mom. She spent twenty years living with dragons and somehow her hair still looks better than my wife’s.
- Gerard Butler as Stoick: He shows up in flashbacks. I miss when he was the main guy because at least he had a beard that meant business.
SPECIAL EFFECTS
The animation is top notch, I’ll give them that. The dragons have scales that actually look like scales, and the fire looks hot enough to burn your eyebrows off. That “Hidden World” place is a bit much though. It looks like a Las Vegas magic show exploded.
MUSIC
The music is loud and keeps trying to tell me when to feel sad. It’s got a lot of fiddles and drums. It isn’t exactly Frank Sinatra, but it fills the silence while the dragons are staring at each other.
RATING
★★★☆☆
(Three stars. It’s fine, but if I have to see one more dragon heart-to-heart, I’m throwing my remote at the wall.)
SYNOPSIS AND PLOT BREAKDOWN
The story starts with Hiccup and his gang jumping onto a ship to rescue some dragons. They bring them back to Berk, which is now so crowded you can’t walk five feet without stepping in dragon droppings. A bunch of warlords hire a guy named Grimmel the Grisly to catch Toothless because he’s the “Alpha.” Grimmel uses a white female dragon as bait.
Hiccup decides the village isn’t safe, so he tells everyone they have to pack up their junk and move to the “Hidden World,” a mythical place at the end of the ocean that his dad used to talk about. They find a new island to stay on for a bit, which they creatively call “New Berk.” Toothless gets distracted by the white dragon and Hiccup builds him a new tail so he can fly off and go on a date without his human shadow.
Eventually, Hiccup and his girlfriend Astrid find the Hidden World and realize it’s a giant hole in the ocean full of glowing mushrooms and thousands of dragons. Toothless is the king there. But Grimmel follows them, captures Toothless and the Light Fury, and threatens to kill everyone. There is a big battle with boats and fire. Hiccup realizes that as long as dragons are with humans, they will always be hunted. He makes the heartbreaking choice to let all the dragons go live in the hole in the ocean. They have a big teary goodbye, and the dragons fly away. Years later, a bearded Hiccup takes his kids out on a boat and they run into Toothless again for a quick hello.
FAMOUS QUOTES
- “There were dragons, when I was a boy.”
- “Go on, bud. Lead them to the Hidden World. You’ll be safe there.”
- “I am the Night Fury killer. I’ve hunted every Night Fury but yours.”
- “But with love comes loss, son. It’s part of the deal.”
- “Legend says that when the ground quakes or lava spews from the earth, it’s the dragons. Letting us know they’re still here.”
INTERESTING FACTS
- This movie is the end of a trilogy that took nearly a decade to finish, which is longer than most of my cars have lasted.
- The villain Grimmel is the opposite of Hiccup because he killed the first Night Fury he saw instead of petting it.
- They had to render over 65,000 dragons in one scene in the Hidden World, which sounds like a lot of computer work for something you only see for a minute.
- The “Light Fury” isn’t the same species as Toothless, she’s more like a cousin from out of town.
- This is the first movie in the series where the twin Tuffnut is voiced by a different guy because the original actor got into some trouble with a fake bomb threat. Kids today, I tell ya.
PHOTOS
