Since it’s hot, muggy, and Father’s Day, I decided today was a good day to go watch a family movie, and this one hit it out of the park.

How To Train Your Dragon 2, the sequel to the 2010 hit, picks up about five years after the original.  Dragons have been fully integrated into the Viking society of Burk, and all of the teenage heroes of the first film are now on the cusp of adulthood, complete with romance and fitting themselves into adult roles.  While exploring, Toothless and Hiccup learn of an evil warrior who enslaves dragons, and the story follow on from there. (Sorry for the crappy synopsis.  I’m trying to not give too many spoilers, because I want y’all to enjoy this movie as much as I did)

The story is very well paced and written.  There were very few places where it slowed down, and those were done for excellent reasons.  Having all of the original voice actors back to make the sequel helped to create a continuity that is missing from a lot of second efforts.  Since I have a six year old son, I’ve seen a lot of the TV cartoons based on the first movie, which fill in holes from the intervening five years in the story, but this didn’t make things boring to me and Boo, and you can enjoy and understand the movie even if you haven’t seen the TV show.  Boo sat quietly for the entire movie, and I never felt bored at all.

The animation was outstanding, leaving the first movie far behind.  Because all of the characters have aged, the makers were able to update their animation a bit, making them some of the most detailed animated humans I’ve ever seen.  The backgrounds and creature animation are almost lifelike in a lot of ways.

The theme of the first movie revolves around the first steps a child takes into adolescence, and this movie continues that with adolescents taking their first steps into adulthood.  It’s done at a level that people of all ages can understand, so it’s kind of thick in places, but it’s done very well for the most part.

The music in the movie was similar to that of the first, but had a little more ‘poppy’ feel to it in places.  I found that a bit distracting, but not so much that I fell out of the movie.

I definitely recommend this movie, either as a matinee with the kids or as a date night with your sweetheart.  We will definitely be purchasing it when it comes out on DVD.