How To Train Your Dragon Is Best Avoided

How To  Train  Your Dragon: The  Hidden World(animation)

Directed  by Dean  DeBlois

Rating: * ½ (one and a half stars)

Do yourself a favour this festive weekend.Use  your time for  more  constructive endeavours.  May be  that molar surgery which  you’ve been avoiding?  Or a  visit to  a really boring uncle which puts you to sleep even before you  reach his home.

How To Train  Your Dragon : The Hidden World  pans out the  story from the earlier    two  films, both of which were pretty ho-hum in conception and  treatment. But at  least they qualified as faintly fascinating  fluff.

 This one  is  not even halfway  there.It is  an embarrassingly low-calibre  eco-friendly  flick with  splashy  artwork and  silly animation pitching in for true inspiration. The third film in the series  is so blatantly an attempt  to  stretch a successful idea that it seems  an embarrassment for  all concerned.

  Our young hero  Hiccup(vibrantly voiced by Jay Baruchel) is still enamoured of  dragons and he still protects and preserves them the way normal people would care  for their family.

I really don’t follow this unhealthy passion  for  dragons  . Unless canines and cats have become passe over the years. The  fire-spewing dragons are designed  in shades  of  blotchy fantasia. Big bulky unwieldy creatures oscillating  merrily between fun and  fearsome, mostly  the former. I mean, who gets  scared  of computer-generated animation?

There is a  villain ,Grimmel the Grisly voiced with eclectic menace by F Murray Abrahams. He wants to  capture  all the dragons for his own selfish concerns.He’s welcome  to them.

But hang on. There are  more good souls in this  film  than  bad. The villains get easily outnumbered and outwitted. There  is romance too. Between two dragons a   black and white one. Think  there is a message  of racial  harmony in  that fiery liaison. But two  dragons  flying to  the  tune  of  dreamy  piped music is  not  my cup of tea.Or my pot of shuddh glee.

The  good news is that this is the  last part  of a trilogy.We bid a happy  farewell to this self-important  balderdash.

This strenuously designed animation film makes you wonder whom  it  is aimed at. Kids don’t watch such sassy mush. Grownups? Hell,  they’d rather see Captain Marvel. As for us, there are other far more  relevant dragons to slay this weekend.  let’s take  a vow to  watchKesari .