How to Train Your Dragon - Paramount Pictures

How to train your audience:  base your animated adventure on a children’s book, make sure they know it’s from the studio that brought you the "Shrek" films, and drive home the point that this movie is in 3-D.

That last lesson is the important one right now:  you need to let audiences who flocked to "Alice in Wonderland" and "Avatar" know that is the same technology, and if they liked those films, they’ll like this too.  Actually, "How to Train Your Dragon" does have a bit in common with Avatar  – there are some visuals like nothing you’ve ever seen before, illustrating a story that’s well… a lot like something you have seen before.

We probably saw it last just a few months ago with "Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs," the 3-D animated adventure based on a children’s book about a young misfit wannabe-scientist seeking validation from his peers and his father.  "How to Train Your Dragon"meanwhile is a 3-D animated adventure based on a children’s book about a young misfit wannabe-Viking seeking validation from his peers and his father.  Hiccup wants to be a mighty dragon-slaying Viking like his father and the muscle-bound warriors in his village, but he’s better suited to more intellectual, less understood tasks.  He discovers a “Night Fury” Dragon – a dragon none of his fellow villagers have ever seen but still fear.

Hiccup though becomes friends with the dragon, and they learn they’re better friends than enemies.  Can Hiccup convince the villagers – and Dad – that dragons shouldn’t be slain but trained to co-exist with them?  Wow, this is like Avatar!

OK, you’ve seen it before and maybe your kids have too, but they may not care.  "How to Train Your Dragon" is, despite the 3-D special effects, a cute little movie at heart. Hiccup is a likeable young hero, and his dragon buddy, at times resembling a cat, brings on many “awwww” moments.   Interestingly, from the studio that’s always been considered the Anti-Disney with more subversive humor and modern-tinged jokes (think "Shrek" and "Kung Fu Panda"), "How to Train Your Dragon" pretty much stays true to its medieval times without winking to 21st century audiences.  It’s got a cute, charming sense of humor but no real “gags.”  (It is the Anti-Disney in one curious way.  Hiccup has a father, not a mother – Disney’s young heroes tend to have it the other way around, if they have parents at all). 

Hiccup is voiced well by Jay Baruchel, currently onscreen in "She’s Out Of My League."  He’s one of several “newer”, somewhat hipper stars who do a good job, including his Judd Apatow movie co-star Jonah Hill, Craig Ferguson, Kristen Wiig and Gerard Butler (who’s much better in animated or semi-animated warrior mode than he is in any romantic comedies he’s tried.)

But most noteworthy is the look – the animation is exquisitely detailed – from the freckles on Hiccup’s face and the scales on the dragons to the cascading oceans and the majestic mountains.  It’s all enhanced by being in 3-D.

I do wonder if it’s going to be too intense for the really little ones.  The bigger dragons are pretty harsh looking when they bare their fangs.  And story-wise, without saying how it all wraps up, there is one little bit to the ending I wonder how kids will react to.  It’s done sensitively, but its inclusion is a surprise.    

Still, it’s not like they’ll walk away burnt by anything "How to Train Your Dragon" spits out at them.