How To Train Your Dragon (Review Thread)

[EricJ]

Originally Posted by SquidPuppet

If you rent the Blu-ray, you will say "SH!T, I should have caught this at the theater."
If you see it and think it sucks, come back and abuse me. But this one just does not have any of those divisive elements that some flicks have. Its a plain old romping action flick with a load of other good qualities.

On one of the animation boards, we were discussing how Dreamworks doesn't seem to have a united "house style" like Pixar does--unless, of course DW does have a "house style" for the Shrek movies, and they're trying desperately to get away from it--that "you never quite know whether you're going to get the Good DW or the Bad One", and that this was one of the Good ones, like Monsters vs. Aliens and Prince of Egypt.

Which brought up the idea that DW doesn't seem to have a head on its body, and has to import all the Good in its good movies: Either by hiring good directors from elsewhere (like, say, from Disney), or, like Brenda Chapman with "Egypt", discovering good directors who end up doing better movies elsewhere...Like, say, at Pixar.
While it's a Good movie, and "not a Dreamworks one", that does seem to work against it--We're watching a good movie made by directors who used to work for Disney, and know in the back of our mind that DW will never be able to reproduce the results under their own power unless they hire the same bargain-saled directors to save their behinds again.

...In other words, keep an eye out for how many people you hear coming out of the movie saying "This was Pixar's best movie yet, but that one Dreamworks teaser they showed looked awful!"