Big Box Office

I saw 2 movies in theaters this past week: Hot Tub Time Machine and How to Train Your Dragon. They are listed as #3 and #1 on the box office chart, respectively but that doesn't seem fair to me, since I paid $5 and $12.50 (again, respectively) to see them. The additional ticket price of 3D movies skews the box office numbers, and highlights it is a poor way to show what is "The number 1 movie in the country" or of all time. I'd love to see a system that counted tickets, and perhaps threw in screen count in the equation.

How to Train Your Dragon

****
This is another movie whose title first attracted my attention. I'd not heard of the books it was loosely based on, but it seems that foundation serves the film well. The characters have personality and it is consistently maintained with quick, witty dialog.

Hiccup is a young Viking who doesn't fit in with the rest of Berk, the island where they and their sheep (so adorable!) live. Berk has many drawbacks, such as 9 months of snow and 3 months of hail, but the biggest issue is the dragons who raid the village for their sheep. Berk is anxious to fight dragons, like the rest of the island, but has no talent for it. He works at a blacksmiths and builds tools to fight dragons. Testing one of his tools, he manages to down an elusive Night Fury dragon. He finds the dragon injured, but cannot bring himself to kill it, which would prove his belonging to the Vikings. Instead, he befriends the injured dragon, and is able to take his dragon knowledge and use it in his dragon fighting classes. That's the foundation. The real conflict follows from this set up.

I'll admit, I'm delighted by 3D. It was pretty minimally used, maybe even too minimally used in terms of things popping off the screen, but the island of Berk and its surrounds are beautifully rendered. The dragons are colorful, diverse, and not all cartoon-y. Toothless, the main dragon in the film, combines gecko features with feline characteristics into a delightful hero. The sheep have an amazing anxious look. The only thing I didn't really like was the size difference between the adults and the children, which is a little disconcerting.