MOVIE REVIEW: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2
By Sandi Moser
On a rainy night this week, I decided to treat the kids to a weeknight movie - How to Train Your Dragon 2. I picked them up after work and headed to the theatre for my favourite supper - movie
theatre popcorn with butter-like topping and licorice. I have not seen the first movie, so I have nothing to compare this to. The kids have watched it, but I had only seen bits and pieces while passing through the living room.
However, the commericals looked good and it seemed more appropriate for my kids than the other option, Maleficent.
The movie starts 5 years after the first one. The Vikings of Berk are living peacefully with dragons, enjoying their new favourite sport of dragon racing. Hiccup and Toothless spend their time exploring and mapping far away lands. During their expeditions, they discover a secret home of wild dragons and learn about a new baddie, Drago (since I’m deep in Game of Thrones withdrawal, I kept imagining him as Khal Drogo), who is assembling a dragon army. Hiccup and his friends, human and dragon alike, have to work together to protect the peace they worked so hard to establish.
As far as kids movies go, How to Train Your Dragon 2 was not my favourite, but it was certainly not the worst. The story felt like a follow-up movie who was only made to
capitalize on the popularity of the first. With that said, the plot was still was solid enough to make me want to watch the first.
I think one of the things I liked most about this movie was that there were real-world decisions and consequences. Not everything always ends neatly, surrounded by sunshine and lollypops. The addition of fantasy elements like dragons helped to deliver this message to the kids softly in a form they could more easily digest.
There were some slightly scary dragon battle scenes, but I didn’t have either child crawl into my lap. Mini Geek Boy (age 5) did bury his nose in my shoulder at one point, but I think it was more related to the sound volume than to what was on the screen. To put it on the scale of recent films: it was no scarier than the Ice Monster in Frozen and definitely better than the bear fighting scenes in Brave.
How to Train Your Dragon 2 was a movie the whole family enjoyed. I wouldn’t recommend missing a warm, sunny summer afternoon on it, but it’s good rainy-day option.
Sandi is a 30-something environmental engineer and mother of two from the metropolis of Stittsville, Ontario. Writing for Capital Geek Girls is a new adventure for her, with previous writing experience limited to technical documents, briefing notes and Facebook updates. In her spare time, Sandi enjoys playing board games and video games, reading books, watching movies, and crocheting. She looks forward to sharing her geeky endeavours with you, as well as reporting on the next generation’s response to those endeavours.
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