How to Train Your Dragon

Another real nice movie from Diksha's collection of animated movies. This wasn't her first time, but she wanted me to watch... so we did, and I got why it's on her multiple times list.

       

It's mythological times...a community of burly vikings, and fire breathing dragons, pretty much at war with each other at all times. Heroism in the little village is gauged by ability and skill in killing dragons.

And in this backdrop is hiccup, the son of the viking chief......a nerdy, gangly, and friendly chap, and nothing like the tough and brawny viking the father can show off. Needless to say, a major disappointment to the father.

Hiccup, in his effort to impress his father concocts his own catapult and brings down a fierce dragon. Nobody even believes him.... so he searches him out, and when he's all set to kill, finds that he can't kill the injured beast. He can only feel love for the dragon.

Well, they become friends, Hiccup and Toothless, which is what he calls the dragon. He makes a contraption to set right the dragons injured tail wings, and yes, as per title, he trains it, giving us some breathtaking  flying sequences through clouds, between ravines and skimming endless oceans. It's the relationship between Hiccup and Toothless that carries through the movie. Also how Hiccup and Toothless guide the viking community into war with the actual enemy, which is not the dragons ...thus also leading the vikings into an entirely different world view.

How they can make a gawky ugly dragon look cute, fierce and loving is huge credit to the imagination and excellence of Dreamworks.

Toothless reminded Diksha and me a lot of Kutti, a puppy diksha had rescued and who was with us for almost an year, until he was adopted. Sweet and cute, but we could never take the wild out of him :)