How to Train Your Dragon: Still a thoughtful fantasy

How to Train Your Dragon (2025) • View trailer

3.5 stars (out of five). Rated PG, perhaps generously, despite intense fantasy action and peril

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.15.25

I deemed this film’s 2010 animated predecessor perfect, which is a term I rarely use.

 

Writer/director Dean DeBlois’ (mostly) live-action remake therefore had mighty large shoes to fill.

 

After spending several days trying to earn this massive dragon's trust, Hiccup
(Mason Thames) achieves an important breakthrough.

On the encouraging side, DeBlois also co-wrote and co-directed the 2010 original — and its two sequels — all loosely based on British author Cressida Cowell’s children’s book series; he therefore knows the material quite well. DeBlois also cleverly reused one of the original voice actors in his same role here, which is a nice touch of continuity ... as also is retaining John Powell as score composer.

While the result here isn’t up to the original’s quality, it gets reasonably close, and avid fans of the 2010 film will recognize key moments and bits of dialogue.

 

Perhaps too many of them, actually; at times this feels like a scene-for-scene copy.

 

The setting is a long time ago, in an isolated Viking community far, far away. The island of Berk consists of dwellings nestled amid rocky outcroppings, whose inhabitants have long dealt with a unique pest problem: an assortment of imaginatively named, bad-tempered, fire-breathing dragons that frequently raid the community to torch homes while snatching sheep ... and the occasional luckless human.

 

The beasts have been catalogued in a massive book that describes size, speed, levels of danger, weaknesses (if any) and other details. As was the case in the animated film — and Cowell’s book — the story’s whimsy comes from the syntax-mangling names given the creatures: Gronckle, Deadly Nadder, Scauldron, Hideous Zippleback and many more.

 

Along with the legendary Night Fury, which nobody ever has seen.

 

Under the guidance of tribal leader Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler) and inventive blacksmith/weapons designer Gobber (Nick Frost), the villagers have managed to hold their own. Sort of. Stoick occasionally leads ocean-going sorties in an effort to locate and destroy the dragons’ nest, but they’ve never been able to find it; each attempt merely produces more casualties.

 

Stoick’s overly impetuous son, Hiccup (Mason Thames), can’t wait to follow in his father’s footsteps, by joining one such mission. Unfortunately, Hiccup is uncoordinated, timid and completely useless during dragon raids; he therefore has been apprenticed to Gobber, who fails to credit the boy’s clever dragon-battling gadgets.

 

Dumbo: A bumpy flight

Dumbo (2019) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated PG, for dramatic intensity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 3.29.19

1941’s Dumbo, Walt Disney’s fourth animated film, is a simple little fable powered by the loving bond between mother and child. The story carries some powerful messages: the importance of believing in one’s self, along with a gentle nod toward inclusion.

The moment of truth: With a capacity crowd breathlessly awaiting "something they've
never seen before," little Dumbo is encouraged by his friends — from left, Joe (Finley
Hobbins), Milly (Nico Parker) and Holt (Colin Farrell) — to go out and do what he does best.

It also features one of the saddest scenes in Disney animated history, set to the poignant Ned Washington/Frank Churchill song “Baby Mine.”

Disney purists likely were uneasy at the news that a live-action remake was coming from Tim Burton, whose flamboyantly macabre sensibilities were far better suited to his 2010 handling of Alice in Wonderland. Burton, overseeing this sweetly gentle tale?

In fairness, Burton gets it right … for a bit.

The story is set in 1919, as the rag-tag Medici Bros. Circus kicks off another season on the road. Disneyphiles are guaranteed to smile when this travel montage is set to an orchestral Danny Elfman theme that includes snatches of Casey Junior’s song, as the plucky engine pulls the entire entourage in its clickety-clack wake.

The circus is run by irascible ringmaster Maximillian Medici (Danny DeVito) — there is no “Brother,” of course — who’s forever bedeviled by the resident Shakespeare-spouting capuchin monkey, Barrymore. Aside from the other animal stars, the troupe features the usual assortment of faux “wonders”: snake charmer Pramesh Singh (Roshan Seth), heavily muscled Rongo the Strongo (DeObia Oparei) and mermaid Miss Atlantis (Sharon Rooney), among others.

They all keep an eye on children Milly and Joe (Nico Parker and Finley Hobbins), who anxiously greet every train at all their stops along the way, hoping that their father Holt (Colin Farrell) will be among the soldiers returning from the war. (As is cruel Disney custom, their mother is dead, having succumbed to influenza.) When Holt finally does show up, their relief is undercut by the realization that his left arm was a war casualty.

The loss has left him bitter, and he’s uneasy around his children: the typical man who always left such matters to his wife. As a further twist of the knife, Holt — once a star attraction, as a skilled horseback rider — has no job, Max having sold the horses to keep the tottering circus financially afloat.

Such gloomy tidings are shunted aside by the arrival of the circus’ newest attraction: the baby just born to elephant Mrs. Jumbo. Alas, this youngster has freakishly oversize ears, much to Max’s dismay, and the sneering taunts of cruel handler Rufus Sorghum (Phil Zimmerman). The circus performers, accustomed to being regarded as outsiders themselves, find nothing to laugh at.

Whereupon we hit this film’s first potential problem.