Beautiful film but lacking any real depth

Rating: 6/10 (14 April 2020)

There seems to be an abundance of terrible animated 'family' films around these days, all characterised by the same flaws; unnecessarily complex storylines, inappropriate adult themes, overwhelming cluttered CGI and sickly self-righteous characters.
How To Train Your Dragon is free of most of these issues. It is an imaginative yet straightforward tale, appropriate for all ages and visually impressive without being chaotic. It is also a nice runtime of under 100 minutes, far more digestible than these baffling 2-hour marathons that today's ADHD generation of sugar-filled children have no chance of following.
My main problem with animations is that it can be so difficult to connect with the characters. Hiccup is quite bland and cloying, churning out the usual clichés and self-aware nerd humour. Astrid is equally one-dimensional and fails badly as a supposed love interest. The older Vikings are just stereotyped background fodder and don't add any depth to the story. As a result, I couldn't really get into this film and found it quite dull, despite the brilliant animation.