How to end a movie trilogy on a high
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (PG, 104 mins) Directed by Dean DeBlois Reviewed by James Croot ★★★★
Rivalled only by the Wetainfused Apes as the best trilogy of the current decade, How to Train Your Dragon completes its triptych with a fitting final flourish.
An animated series that has benefited from its ever-present writer-director Dean DeBlois and his resulting singular vision, Dragon ends with a surprisingly sombre tale that sometimes threatens to be simply a series of set pieces before coalescing into a satisfying send-off to characters we’ve grown to know and love.
As The Hidden World opens, Hiccup’s (Jay Baruchel) dream of a dragon-human utopia has become a nightmarish reality for some of Berk’s longer-in-the-tooth residents.
So effective have the dragon rescue squads been that their island home is now bursting at the seams with Bewilderbeasts and Baby Nadders.
‘‘One day you’re going to pick a fight you can’t win,’’ Gobber the Belch (Craig Ferguson) warns his young leader, who also urges him to marry Astrid (America Ferrera) and settle down.
But Hiccup has other plans. Remembering a story his father once told him, he believes they need to leave their home of seven generations to search for the hidden dragon world where they could live together in harmony and safety.
However, they’ll first have to avoid the attentions of the villainous dragonslayer Grimmel the Grizzly (Amadeus’ F Murray Abraham).
The conniving and ruthless Grimmel has an unexpected ace up his sleeve – a female ‘‘light-wing’’ who threatens to divert the attention of Berk’s alpha dragon and Hiccup’s beloved companion Toothless.
While somewhat lighter than The Empire Strikes Back-esque second instalment, there’s still plenty of perilous and potentially painful moments on display here.
There are also echoes of franchises past, with Hiccup’s prosthetic limb and flaming sabre, a journey to World’s End and the idea that home is wherever you are (seemingly borrowed from another Norse-themed recent fantasy).
But although you could argue it also follows a path similar to the third entry in another Dreamworks fantasy series (and a Fox one involving the ancient past), there’s also enough crowd-pleasing moments and twists to make this fresh and fun.
Toothless’ comedic attempts at wooing his potential paramour are a silent delight, while a motormouthed monologue from Kristen Wiig’s hardcase Ruffnut will have you in stitches.
However, what really impresses and makes this worthy of a school holidays trip to the cinema are the visuals, which have been ramped up another notch, particularly in the evocation of the dragon’s world.
It’s a breathtaking, colourful landscape that will make James Cameron green with envy.
As he attempts to resurrect Avatar, he would also do well to learn from the Dragon creators in how to craft a successful series of movies, each a rollicking standalone story, but also forming a vital chapter in a coherent whole. Green Book (M, 130 mins) Directed by Peter Farrelly Reviewed by Graeme Tuckett ★★1⁄2
In 1962, the black popular/ classical pianist Don Shirley decided to tour the deep south of the United States. Segregation and hatred were rampant. Hundreds of towns and provincial cities from Louisiana south were still officially or unofficially ‘‘sundown towns’’, where any black man found outside after sunset could be arrested.
Shirley could have earned better money if he had stayed home in New York City, playing to adoring audiences on Park Avenue, but this tour was intended to prove a point, if not actually provoke.
Shirley knew he would need a driver and minder. He employed the ex-head of security at New York’s Copacabana Nightclub, Tony ‘‘Lip’’ Vallelonga.
Shirley and Vallelonga were chalk and cheese. Shirley was educated, urbane, multi-lingual, liberal, a musical prodigy and a man who moved easily in the company of royalty and presidents. Vallelonga was Bronx to his bones, a self-described bigot and a man who communicated with his fists.
Green Book is a road trip movie, a mismatched buddy comedy and an occasionally likeable parable of America today and over the past 50-plus years.
The Green Book of the title was a publication – it remained in print until 1966 – that listed for black travellers all the hotels and motels in the south that would allow them to stay, or at which they might be safe. Let that sink in for a minute.
At its best, Green Book is an oddly light-hearted take on a period in American history – one we can argue is not done yet – in which skin colour meant more than anything else in defining the trajectory of your life.
Shirley didn’t rise above racism by any average amount of talent or application. He was a once-ina-generation prodigy who even a society founded on racism couldn’t help but acknowledge. But in the south, the same concert hall management who found Shirley a Steinway piano still wouldn’t let him use an inside toilet.
The greatest weakness of Green Book is that it insists on trying to find the humour in nearly every situation Shirley and Vallelonga encounter. Director Peter Farrelly (There’s Something About Mary ) is either unequipped or unwilling to tackle the sheer ugliness of much of this material. That approach weakens the entire film.
By comparison, Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman was a far tougher and more heart-stopping film than Green Book, but it was also a hell of a lot funnier.
In the leads, Mahershala Ali (Moonlight) and Viggo Mortensen (The Lord of the Rings trilogy) both do awards-ready work. Mortensen is especially well-served by a script that offers the story as far more Vallelonga’s journey than Shirley’s.
What Ali could have done with a more sharply drawn character we will never know. Producer and cowriter Nick Vallelonga – Tony’s son – must be justifiably proud of getting his how-Dad-learned-tostop-being-racist fable to the screen. But the greater evil of generational racism goes mostly ignored and unexamined.
There’s enough crowd-pleasing moments and twists to make this fresh and fun.