Movie Review: Your Dragon

Murphy leaves for home two months from today.

Sometimes the security words on Blogger sites make uncanny sense.  The other day, I got one that was actually one of the coolest non-words I’ve ever seen—thus,

TODAY’S CHALLENGE:

Define: dicasity.

I double dare you.

—-=0=—-

The Review:

How to Train Your Dragon

(one of the most unfortunate, prosaic, pedestrian titles ever)

I don’t usually expect a lot of out Dreamworks.  For me, they’ve been sort of the burlesque of the animation world—long on the slightly bawdy joke, the overblown character with the oversized trousers and the loud, silly voice.  With them, it’s pretty much been The Gag is King.  Sort of the court jester to the classier, more dignified, intelligent and graceful Pixar.

I love Pixar.  And what I love most about them is that they protect the story.  You get meat with them, complex characters and plot that asks questions.  Pixar can move me, often more deeply than most of the recent (read last ten years’) live action films.  I honor them for their quality, their gentleness, cleverness, humor and humanity.

Tonight, Dreamworks really surprised me.  Tonight, they gave Pixar a real run for the money.

I had heard good things about Your Dragon.  We chose to see the non-3D version because G gets cross-eyed behind the glasses and Chaz gets headaches.  And because I figure, if you can’t sell me your story without the gimmick, I really don’t have time or money to waste on you.

Let me just say that I loved this movie.  The balance between humor and drama?  Pretty near perfect.  Complex characters.  A well-worn-because-it’s-always-true tension between father and son, nerd and jocks, convention and the outside-the-boxer—wonderfully told.

The film is visually stunning, the human characters’ movement having grown past the cartoony/balloony Shrek style.  They’ve got hair down, now, has Dreamworks – in spades.  But it was their physics, the physics of fire and flight, that really blew us away.

I’m not going to cover the plot.  There’s nothing that new under the sun being told these days (really, how can there be?).  But when you can surprise me and make me wonder how things are going to turn out – make me fear how they will turn out, then you have told me a story worth telling.  I was moved.  Really, deeply moved.  Funny – I came out of it feeling proud that I’m human, knowing I can do great things, believing in the power of love.

There were great faces.  And when I am that lost in the characters, it makes utterly no difference to me whether they’re drawn or real.

Cliché fulfilled: I laughed, I cried, I bit my fingernails to the quick.

And now I want a dragon, too.

P.S.  We saw the trailer for The Last Airbender, the movie that should have been called, Avatar.  We can’t wait.