Movie Reaction: How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

Formula: (How to Train Your Dragon * Toy Story 3) / Toy Story

I just don't love How to Train Your Dragon as much as other people I know. That's what a lot of this Reaction is going to come down to. The first movie left no impression on me (I meant to rewatch it in preparation for this to see if I could find what I missed the first time). The second movie I remember really getting into in the theater, but again, it didn't really stick in my mind. What I do know is this. Dreamworks Animation came out of the gate as the first real competition Disney Animation had in a while back in the late 90s. It directly competed with Pixar when the two studios released A Bug's Life and Antz the same year. The Shrek series built the studio into an industry force. The first Shrek beat Pixar (Monsters, Inc.) for the first Animated Feature Academy Award. The second Shrek for a time was the 4th highest grossing movie of all-time*. It looked like Disney had a real competitor. While series like Kung Fu Panda and Madagascar have done decent business, Dreamworks Animation has fallen behind Illumination (Minions, Secret Life of Pets) after milking everything it could out of Shrek. Since buying Pixar, Disney has widened the gap between first and second significantly. Dreamworks Animation hadn't even release a film in 20 months before The Hidden World. For the last decade, How to Train Your Dragon has be the great fire-breathing hope for the studio. Even though I have trouble loving the franchise as much as other people, I do appreciate its place in the animated landscape and looked forward to this final installment.

*Behind Titanic, Star Wars, and The Phantom Menace for unadjusted domestic gross. It remained there until Avatar bumped it down in 2009.

The Hidden World is exactly what fans of the series want. Hiccup, Toothless, and the gang are back. This time, they are running from an infamous dragon hunter, Grimmel, who wants to eradicate the last of the Night Furies (i.e. Toothless). Hiccup hopes to move the citizens of Berk to a safer location and maybe find the mythical Hidden World where supposedly the dragons all come from. As far as villains go, Grimmel isn't very interesting except that's he's voiced with pleasure by F. Murray Abraham. His master plan is half-baked, but it works well enough to keep the plot moving forward.

Virtually the entire voice cast is back. Only TJ Miller as Tuffnut is gone, because, Hollywood finally figured out that TJ Miller is kind of a dick. Jay Baruchel is perfect for Hiccup. I've always been a fan of America Ferrera's Astrid as well. Hiccup and Toothless' relationship is the heart of the series, and, well, this movie successfully tugs at those heartstrings.

The animation is fine. It didn't blow me away. The movie is funny enough. The series still has the competition beat for animated action sequences. For people who are bigger fans of the series than me, I think this is a very satisfying conclusion. I didn't tear up the way that others apparently have, but I'm willing to chalk that up to me being dead inside*. I'm not sure where Dreamworks goes next.

*Ignoring the fact that just the night before I had a lump in my throat watching Fighting with My Family. Perhaps I'm just an inconsistent person.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend