How to Train Your Dragon 2, review: Storytelling has vigour and imagination

Sequel strikes right balance between comedy, action and family drama

A scene from How To Train Your Dragon 2 (DreamWorks Animation)

Writer-director DeBlois strikes just the right balance between knockabout comedy, action and heart-tweaking family drama.

The hero, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), with his one missing leg, is an engagingly mischievous figure who dotes on his pet dragon Toothless (and Toothless in turn slobbers all over him, like a pet labrador.)

With his long black braids, growling voice and permanent scowl, Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou) makes a suitably ferocious villain. The 3D is put to good effect as dragon patrols fly through the icy skies or as Hiccup stumbles into a magical, Edenic kingdom where dragons big and small roam free.

None of the ideas here are especially original. For fiery beasts, the dragons are sometimes just a little bit too much on the cuddly gonk side.

A scene from How To Train Your Dragon 2 (DreamWorks Animation)

Only in the final reel battle sequences are we given a sense of just how lethally these winged creatures can behave.

The filmmakers borrow freely from Avatar, Sword In The Stone and even Brave but they bring enough vigour and imagination to their storytelling to get away with it.

Read more: How to Train Your Dragon 2 video game review