How to Train Your Dragon review: How to nail a remake
They're called 'live-action remakes', and in the hands of the Mouse House they have been some of the most abominable productions ever committed to the big screen.
Aside from the fact that these outings are tired, barrel-scraping facsimiles of animated classics, ones that never asked to be produced in the first place, they often simply don't work as concepts.
A cartoon crab singing a calypso song is cute. An actual crab doing so is weird and unsettling. Cartoon lions and meerkats cavorting in the Savannah is fun and compelling. Anatomically precise fauna doing so looks like a David Attenborough documentary during a bad trip.
With the Snow White retread earlier this year, the response from critics and viewers was so galling that the media circus surrounding the film paled in comparison.
The casting, the reconfigured politics, the unnecessary tweaks to the plot, the hideous CGI dwarves – everything about it was a miscue.
If anything was to spell the death knell of the live-action remake, Snow White was it. And yet, just a few months later, one has arrived that persuasively argues a stay of execution.
DreamWorks – not Disney, tellingly – scored a hit in 2010 with How to Train Your Dragon, an impeccable blend of medieval fantasy and action-adventure for younger constitutions.
Inspired by Cressida Cowell's books, it told of a Viking boy who ends generations of enmity with marauding dragons when he forms a bond with an injured fire-breather.
It was smart and witty, filled with marvellous names like 'Snotlout' and 'Gobber the Belch'. Children were helplessly rapt by the sight of a mounted dragon swooping and diving.
In the relationship between young Hiccup and cat-like dragon Toothless, meanwhile, the entire franchise was imbued with an irresistible sweet-centre. Best Animated Oscar nominations greeted all three instalments.
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Franchise linchpin Dean DeBlois – who co-directed that first chapter with Chris Sanders – writes, directs and produces this live-action revisit, with the handsome coast of Ulster ably filling in for the Isle of Berk.
Hiccup (Mason Thames) is inventive and determined but hasn't the warrior chops to win the pride of chieftain father Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler, reprising his role from the animated voice cast).
In a full-throttle intro, the dragons have raided the livestock and Stoick is baying for blood. During that skirmish, Hiccup trialled a new weapon that ended up scuppering a much-feared dragon, the mysterious Night Fury.
When he tracks down the beast with the intention of dispatching it and winning favour with Stoick, mercy wins over and a trust is established with the injured creature, who he names Toothless.
It gives Hiccup an edge as he and a hodge-podge of young recruits are put through their paces as trainee dragon-slayers (tutored by Nick Frost's droll amputee).
The trainees come in all shapes and sizes, but the star of the show is Astrid (Nico Parker), a fierce warrioress who Hiccup knows is way out of his league.
As they are pitted against a selection of various dragon sub-categories, however, Hiccup wields some of the insider know-how gleaned from time spent with Toothless and his stock value rises.
All the while, he's getting closer and closer to taking flight with his new dragon friend, a feat unthinkable among his community.
Tart enough for adults, bold enough for young ones, and tempering elaborate action sequences with succinct passages of character development, you could do a lot worse than bring your own small monsters to this.
Our seven-year-old has a low threshold for jeopardy, but the thrills kept a balance of fun amid the high stakes, which suited him down to the ground. Top Gun for kids, with dragons, if you will.
Frost is commander-in-chief of the comedy relief, but the big cast revelation – and these are not words I pictured myself ever uttering in these pages – was Butler.
Often consigned to something of a schlocky punchline in genre cinema, the bulging Scot does the right thing and hits the 'caps lock' button as the snarling but paternal Viking lord.
By seamlessly flipping a one-time animated role into the live-action arena, he sums up so much of what this film gets right.
Four stars
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