Ping (Lucía Pérez) is the Dragonkeeper, and if she’s to help Danzi (Mario Gas), an elder oriental dragon, she better learn how to train the next generation too! That’s because someone asked her to deliver an egg to a magical pool so it can hatch. As for whether this baby will bond to the human, that’d be saying too much.
Although the choice to have mostly European voices instead of Chinese for this production is very unusual, all I had to do was imagine Michelle Yeoh and James Hong’s voice over what’s heard. Technically, the British/Australian casting isn’t out of place when considering who wrote the book. Carole Wilkinson is an Australian whose series did quite well when it was released down under. I suspect the producers wanted to keep this flavour.
Interestingly, Spanish-born Sergio Pablos (better known for the Despicable Me films) picked up this property and had it animated back in his home country. Although China Film Animation had some involvement, I suspect they had little say when Euros were used to fund the production rather than the weak Yuan. There are six books in total (Amazon link) to pull content from, and what this film does is merely scratch the surface.
Performance wise, I thought I was watching The Force Awakens because we have a spunky child who is like Daisy Ridley from Star Wars. She has to figure out her place in the universe and when the dragons want her as the chosen one; I had to chuckle. Bill Nighy is great at the role he’s given. After seeing him as Davy Jones, I’m okay with the typecasting. As Wang Chao, he’s quite nasty, even without all the sailor talk!
Although this home video release is very bare bones, I’ll take it. After seeing this work, I’m more curious to find out how much was changed from the books. When I get the time, I’ll have to see if the series is available from the public library so I can make a more detailed comparison. Since a lot was altered to make How to Train Your Dragon a success, I suspect the producers did the same here.
3 Stars out of 5
Dragonkeeper Movie Trailer
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