We look at this week’s new cinema releases
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 2 (PG)
Based on the book by Cressida Cowell, the 2010 computer-animated adventure How To Train Your Dragon soared tantalisingly close to perfection.
Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois’ brilliantly executed story of one boy’s remarkable friendship with a supposedly fearsome dragon was deeply touching, distinguished by richly detailed visuals and an intelligent script.
The sequel, directed solely by DeBlois, expands the narrative arcs of the characters, testing their mettle in the aftermath of tragedy and conflict. Boys cross the Rubicon to manhood, parents make selfless sacrifices to protect their brood and evil poisons an innocent heart.
As a wise woman in the film proclaims: “Good dragons under the control of bad people do bad things.”
Five years have passed since Hiccup (voiced by Jay Baruchel) befriended Toothless, and the inhabitants of the village of Berk now live in harmony with the dragons.
Hiccup’s father, Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler), continues to preside over the people.
He hopes Hiccup will accept his destiny as the next tribal chief, but the boy prefers to soar through the clouds astride his trusty Night Fury.
During a regular sortie with Toothless, Hiccup stumbles upon a lost world of rescued dragons and a valiant rider named Valka (Cate Blanchett), who turns out to be a long-lost face from the past.
“It’s not every day you find out your mother is some kind of crazy, feral, vigilante dragon lady,” whoops Hiccup.
A tearful family reunion with Stoick is cut short by diabolical dragon hunter Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou), who storms this lost world and takes control of the majestic fire-breathing creatures using a gargantuan alpha dragon.
World domination beckons and all that stands in Drago’s way are Hiccup, Toothless and the boy’s plucky friends – Astrid (America Ferrara), Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), Snotlout (Jonah Hill) and twins Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig) and Tuffnut (T.J. Miller).
In almost every aspect, How To Train Your Dragon 2 matches its polished predecessor – except one.
The addition of Oscar-winner Blanchett to the vocal fold is a calamitous misjudgment.
From the outset, the Australian actress is engaged in a futile tug o war with her Scottish accent that initially roams the British Isles and eventually strays across the entire Commonwealth.
Her verbal strangulations are horribly distracting and undermine some of the film’s most emotionally charged moments of reconciliation and remembrance.
For his part, writer-director DeBlois charts a breathless course between drama, action and comedy, the latter delivered with scenery-chewing gusto by Craig Ferguson as Stoick’s best friend, Gobber the Belch.
“Valka’s meatballs could kill more beasts than a battle axe. I still got a few knocking around in here,” he grimaces, pointing to his belly.
Flying sequences deliver a vertiginous thrill, especially in 3D, including a couple of death-defying battles that slalom and swoop at dizzying speed.
Blanchett aside, lightning nearly strikes twice.
TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION (12A)
If Michael Bay, director of Transformers: Age of Extinction, were immortalised on screen as a “robot in disguise”, his mechanised alter ego might be Maximus Kaboom.
For two decades, the Californian film-maker has been elevating wanton destruction to a blockbusting art form.
In Armageddon, he pitted Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck against a gigantic asteroid on a collision course with Earth and orchestrated destruction to the sonic booms of Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want To Miss a Thing.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor provided Bay with a turbulent backdrop to his 2001 war opus.
Since 2007, he has been ensconced in the Transformers fold, bringing bombast to live-action adventures of the bestselling Hasbro toys.
This fourth instalment in the Transformers fold is crammed with director Michael Bay’s usual visual excesses and motifs, including gleaming cars and a pouting female protagonist in hilariously short denim shorts.
Five years have passed since the Battle of Chicago, which provided the pyrotechnic-laden climax to Transformers: Dark of the Moon.
The alliance between humans and robots lies in tatters and an elite CIA unit named Cemetery Wind, under the control of Harold Attinger (Kelsey Grammer), hunts Transformers without mercy.
On a family ranch, struggling inventor Cade Yeager (Mark Wahlberg) discovers that a rusty truck he has just purchased is battle-scarred Optimus Prime (voiced by Peter Cullen).
Agents from Cemetery Wind descend on the homestead and Optimus protects Cade, his daughter Tessa (Nicola Peltz), her secret boyfriend Shane (Jack Reynor) and Cade’s mechanic sidekick Lucas (T.J. Miller) in the ensuing gunfight. The humans join forces with Optimus to reunite the Autobots and the rebellion plots a swift response to inventor Joshua Joyce (Stanley Tucci), who has created his own Transformer army led by the mighty Galvatron (Frank Welker).
Transformers: Age of Extinction opens with Cade and Lucas scouring an abandoned cinema for scrap metal.
“Sequels and remakes – bunch of crap,” growls the grizzled owner as he surveys memorabilia from bygone blockbusters that litter the tumbledown building.
Never has a truer word been spoken in one of Bay’s exercises in hyperkinetic style over substance.
Screenwriter Ehren Kruger repeatedly defies logic to contrive outlandish scenarios for pyrotechnics and carnage, including an alien spaceship that sucks up metal then drops magnetically charged cars and boats on to terra firma.
Wahlberg punches and leaps through gaping plot holes, trotting out the concerned father routine as younger members of the cast perform gravity-defying gymnastics to emerge from clouds of razor-sharp shrapnel without a graze or smudged lip-gloss.
Action sequences are visual vomit: an incomprehensible spew of glistening metal and explosions that hurt the eyes especially in the large-scale IMAX format.
“The war will be over soon,” barks Grammer’s Machiavellian politician during a momentary lull. The 165-minute running time says otherwise.