Seeing Double: LILO & STITCH andHOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

Nearly 30 years ago, Gus Van Sant remade Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho nearly shot for shot and caught endless amounts of grief about it. Now the idea of slavishly remaking a popular movie is just par for the family film course. Van Sant’s Psycho doesn’t really work as its own movie, but as an experiment in auteurist personality it retains a weird power. Somehow copying another director’s work in most choices, save for a few frames here and there, ends up with a movie with an entirely different flavor. Where, then, is the soul of a film? Much to ponder. Not so much in this summer’s big live-action remakes of relatively recent animated classics, coincidentally from the same creatives. Animators Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois co-directed Disney’s Lilo & Stitch in 2002 and Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon in 2010. You likely recall that the former is a sprightly, sentimental sci-fi comedy with a wild extraterrestrial critter finding a family with a troubled pair of sisters. The latter is a coming-of-age Viking fantasy in which a teen boy makes an unlikely pet out of a dragon. Both imaginative riffs on the boy-and-his-dog story have easy charm and likable characters and distinctive styles with Stitch drawn in light primary colors, soft rounded shapes and a Hawaiian palate, Dragon a Nordic action-figure ready CG pop-up picture book aesthetic. To transpose them to live action reduces the magic of the animation to humdrum effects, and their familiar story beats go from comfort watch repetition to sluggish recreations. They aren’t fully bad movies, but they are thoroughly boring and superfluous. I couldn’t watch even a single second of them without wishing I was watching the originals. 

The Lilo & Stitch remake is caught between two flawed approaches. When it directly copies shots and sequences from the original, it’s a charmless, lesser version. When it diverges, trimming characters or adding plot threads, it under-delivers or over-complicates. That leaves the whole thing a limp exercise in diminishment. The characters are still basically likable, with Stitch a more photo-real cartoon in the familiar design, and Sanders returns to voice his warbles, gargles, and growls. His interactions with the lead girls have some echoes of the original’s appeal. Little sister Lilo (Maia Kealoha) is a funny kid, and her older sister (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong) has a natural, low-key, sunny-but-stressed affect. Together they have a believable sibling chemistry that helps sell their strained and sentimental dynamic. And we almost believe they’d like this mutant creature. But it's all so dutiful in hitting the expected beats, and assumes investment more than earns it. The picture comes from director Dean Fleischer Camp, co-creator of the cute stop-motion Marcel the Shell with Shoes On. That character’s quiet eccentricities and small emotions bubbling up big might seem a fine match for a movie whose inspiration is full of cuddly edges with a big hit of emotionality. Instead the whole project settles for loud and obvious. It’s a pretty dull redo that knows the notes but not why they sang in the first place. 

For better and worse, it’s only karaoke found in How to Train Your Dragon’s live-action remake. Its commitment to recreating the look of the creatures and sets and costumes frames the movie as an extended deja vu experience. A good memory for the original makes it feel like you’ve already seen the storyboards or animatics; their frames are copied often exactly to make the new one. That it is Dean DeBlois himself in the director’s chair makes it all the more obvious we’re seeing a product of the exact same vision. At every moment, we’re looking at live actors dressed up to resemble their animated inspirations composited into effects sequences that are mostly the same as the original movie’s but with slightly more detailing on the computer animation. Everyone involved accepts the task and acquits themselves fine. It’s note for note the same. The original story is so solid, and the soaring score from John Powell is so stirring that it’d be hard to flub entirely. The plotting still works, the young actors are all cute and likable, and the adults (from Nick Frost and Peter Serafinowicz to Gerard Butler reprising his role as the Viking chief) bring enough warmth and gravitas. But unlike a rewatch of a classic, which has comforting familiarity and the benefit of deepening awareness, there’s a pervasive sense in a redo of tracing over fresh images for a stale paycheck. What’s so buoyant and imaginative in animation turns heavy and dreary when you have to see real people doing it. 

High-Flying Adventure: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2

Like all good fantasy sequels, Dreamworks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon 2 takes the world its predecessor built and expands upon it. The first film introduced us to the tiny island of Berk where a village of Vikings lived to fight off dragons preying on their flocks of sheep. It followed Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), the shrimpy son of the leader (Gerard Butler), as he learned dragons aren’t so bad once you get to know them. By the end, he’d trained a fierce and adorable one he named Toothless as a pet and saved his village from destruction in the process. Now, as the sequel starts, the village lives in peace with the dragons, having realized they’re lovable, loyal, useful animals. There’s no conflict there, so the movie pushes forward, opening five years later on Hiccup and Toothless flying out over the ocean exploring new islands and finding new species. When they land on what is to them uncharted territory, he takes out his hand-drawn map and adds a new page, as fitting a symbol for the start of a new chapter as any.

Writer and director Dean DeBlois, who served as co-writer and co-director with Chris Sanders on the first film, takes the light boy’s adventure and enriches it by foregrounding the boy’s evolution into a man and bringing the cast of background characters more clearly into focus. While struggling with his status as heir, Hiccup, now taller, more toned, and with a touch of stubble on his chin, is drawn into conflict. First, he runs into dragon trappers, led by a hunky, ambiguously bad guy voiced by Game of Throne’s Kit Harington. They’re mercilessly poaching the majestic beasts. But that’s merely prelude to bigger trouble care of a distant warlord (a growling Djimon Hounsou) who threatens hostilities with his army of captive dragons. With a name like Drago Bludvist, pronounced “blood-fist,” he’s born to be bad. Riding out to help quell this new conflict are Hiccup’s father, as well as a likable ragtag band of villagers (America Ferrera, Craig Ferguson, Jonah Hill, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, T.J. Miller, and Kristen Wiig) who last time were background color, but this time come into focus as their own distinct characters with subplots and emotional throughlines. 

The first time around, the dragon training was a highlight, a boy-and-his-dog dynamic between a scrawny teen and a jet black, bat-winged, puppy-dog-eyed salamander. Never better than when in flight, the 3D animation dipped and spun with immediacy and vertiginous beauty. It was a thrill. This time, the thrill comes not just from that relationship and the dragon flying, which is as nicely and excitingly rendered as before, but also in the conflicts complicating this fantasy world. The threatened destruction is at a higher magnitude, the characters have more at stake, and the scale towers over them with subwoofer-rattling rumblings. New dragons include a skyscraper-sized alpha beastie that breathes icy breath leaving jagged icicles in its wake. The damage to dragons is also more personal. The introduction of a mysterious figure in the wild, a protector of dragons (Cate Blanchett) who unlocks further secrets of the species, finds time to highlight sliced wings and missing limbs, the result of near-misses with hunters. There’s an ecological weight to this film, a sorrow and responsibility.

The dragon protector has an important connection to Hiccup and much to teach him. The way the plot unfolds finds surprisingly rich emotions to tap into as their relationship is fully explained. The scene where this woman meets Hiccup’s father is astonishing in its tenderness and maturity. It could’ve gone in many big ways – tearful, scary, or regretful – but instead goes for a hushed whisper and a sweet folk song. The film is all about surprising with those kinds of scenes. An early moment between Hiccup and his love interest has a loose conversational quality as they flirtatiously tease each other. A late turn that deepens and darkens the relationship between boy and dragon is unsettling and a real shock, making the resolution all the more stirring. There’s seriousness to the storytelling here that respects both the fun of its colorful fantasy and the emotional lives of its characters.

It’s a movie about responsibility, aging, death, abandonment, and environmental destruction. You know, for kids! It’s bright, vibrant, has a soaring score and rousing action. But there’s a melancholy beneath that’s unexpected in its gravity. I appreciated how respectful of its audience the film is, unwilling to talk down to children and not feeling the need to stretch for adult attention. It’s simply a good story told well. And that’s more than enough to captivate. The animation is gorgeous, digital-painterly tableaus of fantasy landscapes and fluid character movement. The images within stir the imagination. A swarm of dragons flutters about like a flock of birds. Rising slowly and silently out of the clouds, a lone rider wearing a horned mask and carrying a rattling staff, sits atop a massive creature. A boy flies his dragon into the wild, and returns something closer to a man. It’s a terrific, exciting, involving adventure told with great feeling and a good eye.

Training Day: HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON

How to Train Your Dragon is a well-crafted and memorable computer-animated film. It has likable characters, crisp dialogue, and smooth, detailed, expressive animation. It has a rousing score and great widescreen compositions. It’s exciting and more than a little moving. I was pleasantly surprised. The film comes from Dreamworks Animation, but the creators are Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, who created Lilo and Stitch, the last genuinely great film to come out of Disney Animation. They bring with them all of the above, but also a deep sense of story and character that finds no need for pointless celebrity gimmickry or in-jokes laced with quickly dated references, the symptoms that have plagued most of Dreamworks’s prior output.

The plot feels familiar. In the past ten or fifteen years, nearly every animation studio has put out an epic adventure-comedy about an outcast young person whose unappreciated talent just might end up saving his community. That’s Disney’s Hercules, Pixar’s A Bug’s Life, Warner Brother’s Happy Feet, Sony’s Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and even Dreamworks’s own Kung Fu Panda. But what Sanders and DeBlois bring to this formula is energy and passion, resulting in a telling that feels so expertly realized that it becomes the kind of filmmaking that follows formula without ever once feeling stale.

Besides, the world the filmmakers create is interesting and fun all on its own. It’s hundreds and hundreds of years ago in an unspecified place and time in a Viking village that has a problem with big pests that carry off sheep and burn down buildings in the middle of the night. Those pests just happen to be dragons. The whole village trains to fight the beasts which flap their way out of the darkness on still and quiet nights. This feels like a fully realized fantasy setting, not just something slapped together out of spare parts.

The leader of the village is the most fearsome dragon-killer (Gerard Butler), but is ashamed of his wimpy son (Jay Baruchel), a weak Viking who is constantly building contraptions. The son is sent to dragon training with the other young people, including the cutie (America Ferrera) he has a crush on. The group of youngsters is led through training by a tough old dragon-fighter (Craig Ferguson) who has a peg-leg and hook-hand to show for his many years of experience. But the son has a secret. One night, he shot down a rare breed of dragon and has been visiting the creature in the forest. It has broken its tail so it can’t fly away. The two of them form a bond, with the son helping the dragon back into the air, and the dragon helping the son learn about dragons. The animation with the dragon is expertly handled. There is no dialogue; the creature remains an animal. All emotion and expression comes through with body language and the eyes. When the dragon finally takes flight, there are several scenes of stunning flight so perfectly realized that I felt like I was flying right along with them. This is a tender and well-told story of emotional interaction between man and beast.

The film leads, as it must, to an epic confrontation with revealed secrets, strong declarations, abrupt changes-of-heart, and fulfillment of romantic subplots all leading up to a huge battle against the true villain. But to say it in that way is to make it sound boring or unexciting. That’s just not the case here. The action is lots of fun; it’s incredibly energetic and well-staged with a great sense of space and energy. The gorgeous animation puts stunning images on screen, not just in terms of detail, but in composition and framing as well. I wasn’t even bothered by the 3D. It seems to work well, and I write that as someone who is still a firm septic when it comes to the longevity or usefulness of the gimmick. The 3D here shames even the much-hyped technique in Avatar in effortlessness and usefulness. It never once pulled me out of the experience.

This extends to the rest of the film as well. It’s an exciting, fast-paced and absorbing story. The voice acting is superb across the board. The actors give soulful, heartfelt performances that are matched by the performances the animators give in bringing them to life. The movie doesn’t quite generate the same emotional wallop that Pixar has become so good at, nor do all the supporting characters add up to much more than scenery. But this is still a very strong effort, high quality all the way. The film is a total delight from beginning to end.