Kids in London - How to train your dragon

Last week my 12 year old daughter surprised me by choosing to see Blindside (OK if you understand American football and like saccharine storylines) instead of How to train your dragon. Therefore, I evoked “Mummy rule” when we selected a movie to see yesterday with another 12 year old girl and a 5 year old boy.

3D specs are usually a challenge with small people but not on this occasion. There were plenty of ads and trailers (Street Dance, Toy Story 3, Shrek – Final Chapter etc) using 3D to full effect so early wriggles were confined to who had the salty popcorn and whether we would spill the huge carton of cola if we removed it from the seat side holder.

The film starts with a village of overweight Vikings (variously with Scottish and American accents and a characters looking like Jack Black – I expected rock songs at any moment) fighting off a raid from airborne dragons who took away a selection of sheep and other livestock despite the most valiant efforts of the Vikings. One wonders why the creatures weren’t kept under lock and key…

Anyway, we meet the slimline, young hero (Hiccup) who is clearly not cut out to be a dragon slayer and is banished instead to help the blacksmith – much to his frustration. Meanwhile, his widowed father (note nod to role of society’s single fathers raising sons) is the all round hero who promptly leaves to try and wipe out the dragon’s nest. Stereotype reshaping continues when Hiccup’s young love object – Astrid – a slim blond with excellent taste in skull decorated belts – is actually a pretty mean dragon hunter herself.

Being a clever and determined lad, Hiccup creates a contraption that manages to down the most feared type of dragon – the Night Fury – which he then discovers trapped in a pretty waterside area with a damaged tail that prevents flight without Hiccup’s replacement invention. Boy and dragon learn about each other and Hiccup applies what he has learned about misunderstood dragons at his dragon fighting training sessions.

Despite the dragons' bad behaviour stealing sheep and terrorising the Vikings it seems that they were only acting in fear of a humungous big baddie dragon who was defeated in the end when Viking and dragon forces came together in a sky battle reminiscent of Avatar’s aerial scenes. Although I did wonder why the big baddie dragon couldn’t be trained like the smaller varieties…stop it mummy, you are spoiling the film.

Anyway, the story potters along at a reasonable pace – I didn’t hear a peep from the five or 12 year olds throughout. The ending is sweet – although Hiccup sustains an injury that increases his empathy with impaired mobility Toothless (his pet dragon). A nice politically correct nod at those who have disabilities – you can still be the hero and win the heart of the lovely heroine. The fact that his dragon – Toothless – looks a lot like Stitch from Lilo and Stitch (apparently some of the directors of this film were involved), and acts more like ET on ecstasy than a fearful monster adds to his endearment.

We left the cinema smiling and doing dragon impressions across Richmond Green – and each of us secretly wished that we had a pet dragon all of our own. Lovely, lovely film and sure to become a classic.