I was hearing all kinds of buzz regarding How to Train Your Dragon 2 about how it was the new Lion King or something, and I was babysitting today, so what else to do on an 80 degree day other than take the kids to the movies?

Before I talk about this movie, I’ll say I have not seen the first one, and the last “new” animated movie I saw was Wreck-It Ralph. How to Train Your Dragon 2 was a really good animation to get me back in the game.

The movie is about this Viking community, specifically one kid Hiccup, that found a dragon in the first movie and has now helped integrate dragons into society. Well in this movie, there’s a baddie who’s forming an army of dragons to take over the world or something, and has to be stopped.

First props of this movie goes to the animation, my favorite part. This movie is visually quite impressive. There are a lot of emotions conveyed through these animated characters, and also there’s a lot of really cool wide shots and color mixing that makes the movie awesome to look at. Second props of this movie goes to the voice actors. I thought Jay Baruchel as Hiccup would be kinda meh in his voice role, but his voice really suited the character well, and made the movie better as a whole. Gerard Butler is Hiccup’s father, and his gruff voice is also really well done and compliments the movie. Even Jonah Hill’s character had about 5 lines, but I was laughing every time he spoke. There are a lot of other cool voices that make a nice guessing game to play when watching the film too. Third props of this movie goes to the script. There are a few faults that I’ll touch on in a minute, but this script is really well done for the most part. At the end especially there’s a lot of feel-good emotion and even some darkness that makes you feel like the movie should go on longer. The dialogue is good between these characters for a PG kids movie too. An added bonus was after taking World History this past year, I recognized some of the Norse religion references and felt smart on the car ride home. Fourth and final props of this movie goes to the characters. All of these characters balance off of each other so well, and no one feels irrelevant. You laugh when you’re supposed to laugh, you care about who you’re supposed to care about and you hate who you’re supposed to hate.

There were however a couple of issues I had with the movie, and they were found in the script. The pacing of the movie felt a little off, and I feel like the movie should have been about 15 minutes shorter. As I said, I like the end and overall story, but there were a couple exposition-ish scenes that probably could have lost a few minutes and brought the movie up as a whole. Other than that, the only other issue I had is that I feel as though I didn’t like this movie as much as I should have! I’m gonna do a “My Ratings Explained” post later today, but here we go: it’s a very solid movie, yet when considering what makes a movie a 4/5 instead of a 3 ½ /5 is whether or not I’d consider seeing it again, buying it on DVD, or can think of almost no flaws. Again, I’ll explain this more later, but actually deciding on a rating for How to Train Your Dragon 2 was tough!

In the end, I reevaluate and weigh the good with the bad. The effects were stunning, the voice actors weren’t being phoned in, but there was a little bit of dragging… What I’ve realized though is that this is a film that gets better over time. I saw the movie this morning and it’s only gotten better in my mind since then. So I am going to award How to Train Your Dragon 2 the honorary 4/5. Congrats.

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So guys those are my belated thoughts on How to Train Your Dragon 2. Have you seen this movie, and if so what did you think about it? Also, what’s your favorite DreamWorks Animated Film? Whatever those answers may be, let me know down below and as always, thanks for reading guys.