H ow to Train your Dragon in 2010 was such a charming film! It was as if the world of Asterix and Obelix came alive in the smart-as-a-whip Hiccup, the cute as a Labrador puppy dragon Toothless and all the colourful citizenry of Berk.
The 3D animation film, directed by Dean DeBlois, and Chris Sanders was based on Cressida Cowell’s 2003 book. The voice cast included Jay Baruchel as Hiccup Horrendous Haddock III, Gerard Butler as Stoick the Vast, the chieftain of the Viking tribe, Craig Ferguson as Gobber the Belch, who trains the recruits, America Ferrera as the tough-as-nails Astrid Hofferson and T. J. Miller and Kristen Wiig as Tuffnut and Ruffnut Thorston, the fractious twins.
The sequel is set five years after the events of the first movie where thanks to Hiccup’s efforts, far from being the scourge of Berk where “It snows nine months out of the year, and hails the other three,” dragons are pets. As Hiccup wryly comments, “The only upsides are the pets. While other places have ponies, or parrots... we have dragons.”
The sequel is also based on Cowell’s book with Dean DeBlois returning for directorial duties. Baruchel, Butler, Ferguson, Ferrera, Miller and Wiig return.
New entries include Kit Harington (we know him from the telly as Jon Snow from Game of Thrones ) as a dragon trapper, Cate Blanchett as the mysterious dragon rider Valka and Hiccup’s mum and Djimon Hounsou eschewing the noble African to play a cruel dragon hunter.
The new dragon in the film is the bewilderbeast, alpha dragons who hang out in water and breathe out ice.
How to Train Your Dragon was a sweet, funny movie about co-existence and finding yourself.
The makers say the sequel is a coming-of-age story. It would be fun to meet Berk and Astrid and the rest of the jolly Vikings in Berk which according to Hiccup is “twelve days north of Hopeless and a few degrees south of Freezing to Death; located solidly on the Meridian of Misery.”
Princess diaries
The other release this week is Grace of Monaco , starring Nicole Kidman as the titular princess. Directed by Olivier Dahan, the film is produced by YRF with Uday Chopra listed as one of the producers with Pierre-Ange Le Pogam and Arash Amel. The film has its share of controversy with Grace’s children, describing the film as “needlessly glamorized and historically inaccurate.” Director Dahan replied saying, “I am not a journalist or historian. I have not made a biopic. I have done a human portrait of a modern woman who wants to reconcile her family, her husband, her career.”
There were also disagreements about the final cut between Dahan and Harvey Weinstein, the film’s US distributor. Starring Tim Roth as Rainier III, Robert Lindsay as Aristotle Onassis and Roger Ashton-Griffiths as Alfred Hitchcock, Grace of Monaco looks at a specific period of time in 1962 when Grace’s marriage to Rainier was in trouble. Alfred Hitchcock offers Grace a role in his Marnie , Grace is tempted but there is also France looking to annex Monaco and the Princess has to reconcile the public and the personal.
Movies about movies — there was Saving Mr Banks about the making of Mary Poppins , My Week with Marilyn about the making of the Prince and the Showgirl and Hitchcock about the making of Psycho are fun but hardly ever very accurate. We also had the gilded, Diana , where Naomi Watts played the people’s Princess with Naveen Andrews playing her lover, the Pakistani heart surgeon, Haznat Khan. Grace of Monaco combines the two — a movie about a movie as well as royalty. We’ll have to wait and watch if Grace goes beyond the surface glitter.
