This movie was exactly what it needed to be and no more, as though the Powers That Be asked "Do we need to have decent dialogue for this dinosaurs-jumping-out-and-scaring-the-audience movie? Do we need to have consistency in our editing? Probably not. The bare minimum is COOL DINOSAURS CHOMPING and we have reached that bar. Let's go to lunch."
A really interesting look at sports, masculinity, wealth, psychological issues, loneliness and family. I'm not sure to what extent reality has been adjusted to punch up the drama, but it was done quite well.
[*SPOILERS IF YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW THE MOVIE ENDS*]: I read a little bit about this movie before going, but it turned out I'd gotten the two brothers mixed up and I spent the whole movie thinking that Mark was the one who got shot, rather than Dave. I kept thinking, 'Geez, I know this is based on a true story, but narratively it would make SO MUCH MORE SENSE for Dave to get shot than Mark. And how did Dave know so much about what Mark did at Foxcatcher in order to write the book? They must have just made these parts up.' Then Dave DID get shot, so that explained a lot.
I liked the dragon a lot but I thought Hiccup was dumb. I hoped Astrid would fall in love with McLovin or Toothless or no one and Hiccup would learn that girlfriends are not a prize for success in battle.
Nothing really happened in this movie, and after a while it felt like, 'If nothing has happened so far, then when something happens, it's going to be BIG.' They lingered a lot on driving scenes and we all agreed that we expected someone to get t-boned at any minute because of these lingering nothing-happening car scenes. It was an interesting gimmick for a movie and the characters were interesting to meet, but there wasn't much substance to it.
