Retelling the "hero's journey" might be as old as the hills in family-friendly blockbuster animated features, but few filmmakers make it look as effortlessly entertaining as Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois did with How To Train Your Dragon. In order to establish his manhood and become accepted into his tribe, a young Viking called Hiccup first has to prove himself by capturing a dragon. Before long Hiccup has teamed up with Toothless, probably the most loveable dragon in cinema history (although admittedly cute dragons are hardly commonplace in movies). The archetypal rites of passage storyline is told with dizzying camerawork and a sense of scale and space rarely seen in animation (some of the aerial scenes are stunningly realised), and whereas often the theme of rebelling against conformity can feel forced in blockbusters, there's passion to the storytelling here which invites your emotional engagement.
