The Dragon Spell

Our family enjoyed the movie, but liked it better on original ukrainian language. Kids remembered main messages that "strength is in the heart and not in the muscles", "i can not betray my friends". Animation, music, colors are great! And a humor thread made it even more intresting to watch!

Two disclaimers: 1. I am a bit older than 8 2. I didn't make it past 12 minutes of this film... ... after which I skip/jumped through it to see if it showed any sign of improvement. Sadly, it didn't. I like to give family films some leeway and the benefit of the doubt, because they can provide fun entertainment as well as teach values, ethics and other really good things. All of which this film probably does. I'm not sure because by 12 minutes my chin was hitting my chest. This is a film definitely aimed at children. From the highly-predictable script to the clunky unfinished animation to the obviously-recorded-in-a-studio voice track to the snoozer plot line and physical gags... this movie is Saturday morning fare stretched to an hour and a half. If you watch the trailer you will get a very good idea whether you might enjoy this film or not, as it pretty accurately portrays what I saw of the film. The good thing about it: it does let us know early on whether or not we want to invest any more time into watching it. I should have stopped at the barrel juggling, but pushed myself on another 5 minutes. Trust your gut early on this one. As a film to keep young ones entertained it's probably fine. As a "family film" (for the entire family) it's probably not going to deliver.

First off, let me just start off by saying this is an EXTREMELY typical and stereotypical story about evil dragons. Remember how amazing, revolutionary and deep Hw to train your dragon was? Well forget about all that, here dragons are evil by default and deserve to be killed FOR NO REASON. Just ask yourself - what's the motivation of the dragons? It's never explained. Where are the other dragons? Why did they want to burn everything? Not explained either. This is not a movie that teachers your children to think, it's a movie that makes them think stereotypically, giving others labels. They could have partially fixed that by including reptiles as animal characters, bot no - even there there is nothing more but mammals. And in the end, it's "HOORAY TO MAMMALS, WE ARE THE BEST! Let those evil reptiles being extinct forever!"(which is very similar to The Hobbit trilogy with an evil dragon, lots of cute mammal animals but zero reptiles) - that's exactly the kind of movie it is. Animation is fine and directing was almost ok, but because of the wrong messages, the overall story I can't recommend this movie to anyone.

Unlike the other reviewer, who did not make it pass first 12 min of exposition, where the mischievous protagonist is introduced with a few clues for the plot, I have enjoyed the flick completely, as then the trickster Edward is introduced and the action unravels. The only thing I've missed was the pace in culmination, where the airship could've been more dynamic, though I know it is not Mortal Engines ;) The animation is beautiful, love story is innocent and humor is subtle. I do not put much expectations into family movies since Shrek, but this one is definitely better than Ralph and most of the same similar stories since Brave, including the recent Ukrainian animation Stolen Princess, which went big in China. I had a pleasure of knowing some of CGI artist who went to Russia to create their animation boom, of bogatyrs and Masha&Bear and recognize the same mastery in this flick, though not sure, did they return or is it the new generation, one thing I am sure of - Ukrainian cartoons are promising. 4/5 because of lack of motion of monsters and slow pick-up though I've enjoyed Paddington... both parts.