A watchable sequel that never truly takes off

Rating: 6/10 (21 August 2014)

I had no desire to go and see this, but since Hercules was no longer showing this is what I went to see. This time, 5 years after the first which is the most disgustingly overrated animated movie of all time, Hiccup and company team up to fight a laughably unscary villain and discover more of the HTTYD universe. This is like many sequels: Darker (blame The Empire Strikes Back), more complex and bigger. The first was pretty underwhelming so how would this turn out? The answer is OK. What impressed me about How To Train Your Dragon 2 was how it managed to do what a sequel should in a relatively short run time. It's darker, it ups the stakes, it's bolder, it's bigger, it goes in a new direction and the characters have changed as well. It takes the first and turns it up to 11. The animation is stunning, showing it's not just Pixar who do great visuals while some of the plot is memorable. The death of the Viking chief in the middle is unexpected and powerful, while some of set pieces offer some thrills.
So what didn't I like? Pretty much everything I didn't enjoy in the first one. The fictional universe is decent and beautifully rendered, but what sets it back are the characters. Hiccup has been seen many times before and has zero chemistry with his bland and irritating love interest. Aside from Hiccup's mother, all the others are either flat our plain irritating. The script is often flat and unengaging, the film is stupendously unfunny and it has generic written all over it. It's just another DreamWorks mediocrity vehicle with little to distinguish it from the other 500 kids movies out there. This may be because I'm so uninterested in the whole HTTYD world, but for me this was a strictly average sequel which never really soared and without a doubt one of the more lacklustre experiences I've had in the cinema in 2014. Like the first, it's also too montage based and feels rushed and brief. It's not a terrible film and as critics seem to enjoy animated cliché fests (How To Train Your Dragon, Megamind and Bolt I'm looking at you) and children will probably be entertained most will likely find this passable. But for me, it only took off in the second half. Too little, too late.
6/10