A bland and incoherent mess

Rating: 4/10 (19 October 2014)

I watched the first movie when it came out on Blu-ray and i remember how thrilled i was. It had all the right things in all the right places. A decent plot that unfolds gradually, keeps you involved and manages to surprise every once in a while. Awesome characters, diverse, with lots of intensity and drama between them, who search for their true selves, question the set order of things, develop and make uneasy choices, sometimes leading to uneasy sacrifices. Not to mention the beautiful animation and great voices. For me, the first movie was definitely the best animated film of that year and one of the greatest i've ever seen. One of the films that can entertain the kids, but also leave a lot to adults so they could thoroughly enjoy them too. Now you can really understand how high the bar was set and what anticipation i had towards the sequel. It had a great older brother to look up to.
I don't know what went wrong along the production of the second film, but instead of actually trying to give some of its predecessor's feel (look was more or less delivered) it decided to take a kindergarten road. From the very first scene, where we are shown some silly and over the top fidgety dragon games, it felt like we would be seeing this sort of pointless commotion a lot. Right, because kids like it. But i was totally dumbfounded by this new-found ineptitude, so towards the end of the movie the only excitement left in me was about waiting for it to end.
Unfortunately, those who decided that HTTYD2 must be aimed at kids only didn't stop at just filling it with lots of fuss. The characters, even those who showed wits and guts and determination and clear thinking in the first movie, became one-dimensional buffoons. Hiccup's lost-and-now-found mother, who first appears in some Slipknot'esque sort of costume, talks and acts as if twenty years spent away from the people messed up with her sanity somewhat. Stoick is a stubborn moron again, but this time even more like a dimwit with a single tune playing on loop in his head, "You must be a new chief, a chief does this, a chief does that, you must protect your own, nothing else matters, no, i don't wanna listen to you" kind of thing. Towards the end he's written off, but in such lazy way that you are bound to ask yourself if the screenwriters did that intentionally because he got too annoying and out of his depth. And Hiccup himself... In the first movie, he's a witty but confused underdog who tries to prove himself worthy but has more questions than answers inside, which actually result in a great versatility and lots of emotional moments. This time, we get a self-assured and defiant but terminally naive hippie who's trying to preach "people want peace, so please stop doing bad things" to the villain. Who, by the way, looks and acts so dumb, growling and swinging his tamer's prod, that you can't help thinking "How did this stupid brute even manage to take control over the Alpha". The rest of the cast, including those who mattered in the first movie are hardly more than a mere decoration, a placeholder for a handful of overused gags to fill the pause every now and then.
Oh, and the dragons. Lots, lots of them, one more bizarre than the other. But now they are around all the time, constantly brawling, bantering and fooling around, like there's nothing else to do. Even Toothless. While in the first movie we were given much more time of Hiccup and Toothless by themselves so we could see their relationships develop and their personalities unfold, this time around the only thing they seem to be doing is playing games on the ground or having fun gliding in the sky. A great threat-turned-savior diminished to a mere dog with wings and a blaster. So when it's attempted to turn the things around later, it feels nothing but a deus ex machina trick. Even the newest addition to the family, the Alphas, don't bring much refreshment and originality. Once you see them moving and fighting, you just can't help thinking they are all but a ripoff of another type of beasts, starting with "God" and ending with "zilla".
Given all the above, and the plot that only the target audience would find satisfying, no wonder that the result is nothing but a plain and emotionless mess. Really, there's absolutely nothing to feel for, because all the problems the characters experience they create themselves, and when they finally fix them you just think "why couldn't you do that in the first place?!". And to finish it off, a pumped up, with extra slices of epic, soundtrack that rocks a mighty tune every time somebody so much as farts or, more likely, barfs. Towards the ending credits i really OD'd on that stuff so i had to turn the sound down and kept watching only in case they decided to put some potential sequel teaser after. Thank god they didn't.
Some people might claim that the movie's better if you don't compare it to the first one. No it's not. The good remains good, the bad remains bad, no matter from what angles you try to perceive it. The first movie just makes the second one's flaws more obvious, because it gives you a hint at how awesome could be a movie with a given premise. So while the first movie was called "How to Train Your Dragon", probably, to tell us a thing or two on the matter, the second movie should just have chosen a title more suited for its own message, like "How to screw up a sequel to a great film". With that task the creators coped brilliantly, i just hope they won't try to prove their competence in that area again.