How to Train Your Dragon review — live action remake lacks creative fire
Thor almighty! It's happened! After decades of witnessing Disney raid its own back catalogue for soulless live-action reboots, rival studio Dreamworks has finally joined the self-cannibalising remake train. And boy has it proved, with this How to Train Your Dragon update, that it can be as bland as the best of them.
Yes, we're in slavish shot-for-shot remake terrain, ie a live action copy of the original animated frames. This still makes no sense, neuters spontaneity and always proves the superiority of the animated version. It's the cinematic equivalent of those viral Instagram posts that feature classic paintings recreated with friends, kids and animals. Bravo, yes, it looks just like the original but…and?
• Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews
The story of the geeky Viking protagonist Hiccup (Mason Thames) and his gang of teenage warriors now occurs within this awkward straitjacket of shot-for-shot narrative conformity. Hiccup tames a lethal 'Night Fury' dragon called Toothless and must convince his fellow dragon-hating Vikings, especially his father and chieftain Stoick (Gerard Butler), that these creatures are allies and the real enemy is, in fact, a mega-beast called the Red Death. And yet everything that happens on screen, and in the film's remote Northern Ireland shooting locations, has a strangely lifeless quality, like everyone's simply clocking in on the day for there 'This is the bit where…' copycat scene.
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The acting is uneven and symptomatic of a film with no driving vision. Thames's Hiccup is all cartoon reaction shots and wide bug-eyes. Butler, by contrast, goes full Coriolanus in his scenes and even roars through spit and tears at his son, 'They took your mother for god's sake!' The role of fighting femme Astrid has been given to Nico Parker (the perfect child-minder from Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy) but without, it seems, any performance notes other than, well, just stare straight ahead and seem slightly miffed.
It's directed by Dean DeBlois, who co-directed the first one and has, inexplicably and fatally, excised the wickedly snarky personality of Toothless. He's a complicated and grumpy teen-ish dragon in the original but an empty special effect here. DeBlois, however, has kept the brash American accents of the Viking kids, even though their parents are mostly Scottish or Cockney (see Nick Frost as the geezer blacksmith Gobber). Because, clearly, that's important.
It's loud and diverting and very young children are sure to be entertained. But it's also utterly dead, right down to its hollow, greedy, cash-grabbing core.In cinemas from Jun 13PG, 125min
• The island that breathed fire into Cressida Cowell's How to Train Your Dragon
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