DVD Reviews 10/12/10

How to Train Your Dragon is practically perfect

When it comes to making computer-animated movies, Pixar Studios creates the highest quality product around. They started the entire sub-genre back in 1995 with Toy Story and since then the studio has created hit after hit. Counting last year’s Up, Pixar has had ten films in a row that are both financial and critical successes. This sort of streak is unheard of in the entertainment world and there seems to be no end in sight. To put it plainly, Pixar is the best and the standard to strive towards. “How to Train Your Dragon”, however, is not a Pixar production. Those fine gents at Dreamworks Animation that have brought you the sixteen Shrek films and Kung Fu Panda produced it. Dreamworks Animation has always played runner-up to Pixar when it comes to quality and storytelling. Dreamworks has been Pixar’s redheaded stepbrother. With “How to Train Your Dragon” that all is about to change. This movie has all the wondrous animation and textured storytelling to rival Pixar on their best day.

The film takes place on the Isle of Berk in a world where dragons fill the sky and brawny Vikings live to hunt them. All the Vikings share this bloodlust except for young Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), the scrawny son of Stoick (Gerard Butler), the Viking chief. During a dragon’s raid on the village, Hiccup brings down a Night Fury, the most dangerous and mysterious dragon to be found. Once Hiccup comes in contact with the beast, he quickly realizes that all that he thought he knew of dragons is false. Turns out that dragons are just huge, cute puppy-creature that wants to be loved and tickle tortured. The two form a bond and Hiccup must decide how to prove to the rest of his clan that dragons aren’t the monsters they believe them to be.

HTTYD was written and directed by Dean DeBois and Chris Sanders, the pair that brought you the clever and hilarious Lilo and Stitch back in 2002. The two filmmakers excel at giving us well-crafted stories with real heart. This family film doesn’t have a moment in it that seems forced or unnatural. The characters are well rounded and perfectly voiced by a talented and funny group of actors. The supporting cast includes Kristen Wiig, Jonah Hill and T.J. Miller (who stole the show in the sex comedy, She’s Out of My League). There are long stretches of the film that has no dialogue at all, moments between the boy and his dragon that evoke some real emotions. The first time Hiccup climbs on the back of Toothless (this is the dragon’s name despite the fact that he has teeth and knows how to use them) is a remarkable scene. The images of the dragon soaring through the air is breathtaking and worth the price admission alone. It’s in these scenes that the films use of 3D takes the movie to fantastic heights (literally and figuratively).

This is Dreamworks Animation’s best film to-date. This is the first time in the company’s entire history that they have produced something with the scope and resonance to rival Pixar’s quality. Shrek has had huge success financially and the films are very entertaining and funny. They seem slight, however, when you compare them to Wall-E or The Incredibles. Those films have a broad range of both emotion and action. More than anything HTTYD  is wonderful at presenting what it’s like to feel love for an animal. The main attraction here is the connection between Hiccup and Toothless. The filmmakers don’t tell us this. They show us. This movie is so good that Pixar better watch their back.

Something is wrong with Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex is a hurried and disconnected shell-of-a-film that clocks in with a running time of around 80 minutes. In an attempt to cobble a review that matches the filmmakers behind this travesty’s misguided efforts to create something that is as short and shallow as possible, I will be brief and blunt.

Jonah Hex’s (Josh Brolin) wife and child were murdered by a bad man named Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich). Jonah’s face gets branded by Turnbull and he almost dies but doesn’t and now he can wake the dead. Don’t worry about why he has this power, he just does. Now he is a bounty hunter who is called upon by the United States government to stop Turnbull. Hex thought Turnbull was dead but he isn’t. Don’t worry about why Hex thought he was dead or why he isn’t dead, he’s just not and now Turnbull is assembling a giant weapon to blow up the entire country. I don’t know why he wants to do blow up the country. Maybe its because he’s the villain and villains do terrible things in movies like this. And Megan Fox is a prostitute.

There is something extremely wrong with Jonah Hex. The director, Jimmy Hayward, starts the film off with a bizarre cartoon montage that skims over the entire setup and essentially starts the movie square in the second act. This must have been an attempt to get right to the conflict and gun slinging but it leaves the movie empty feeling from the beginning.

It becomes impossible to invest in any of the characters because we really don’t know where they came from or why they are doing anything. Relationships are vague and brushed over quickly. Major characters come and go so quickly that things get heavily convoluted fast. Michael Shannon, who is a pretty prolific actor and was electric in the recent film The Runaways, is reduced to a role as a barker that is so small that it could be confused for a cameo. But it isn’t a cameo; it is a featured role that is underdeveloped to the point that it is barely even on the screen.

The only thing that makes sense is that this is a bumbled project that was in such a shambles that this is the result of a “fix”. The fact that there are four editors credited on the film is a sure sign of that. If anything, I feel sorry for Brolin, who is a likable actor that deserves better projects than this. The thought of him waking everyday and gluing that horrible makeup to his face only to have this be the end result is heartbreaking.

Jonah Hex might have been acceptable had it been directed by an independent director, an auteur like Gus Van Sant or Michael Winterbottom, and presented as a meditation on what is wrong with big, dumb movies. But it isn’t. It merely an attempt at a big, dumb movie that is so slight that it could hardly be considered big. You know what that leaves you with, right? Dumb.