Producers: Marc Platt and Adam Siegel   Director: Dean DeBlois   Screenplay: Dean DeBlois, William Davies, Chris Sanders and Cressida Cowell   Cast: Mason Thames, Nico Parker, Gabriel Howell, Julian Dennison, Bronwyn James, Harry Trevaldwyn, Peter Serafinowicz, Nick Frost and Gerard Butler   Distributor: Universal Pictures

Grade: C+

The lamentable practice of remaking popular animated movies in live-action—or, more accurately, hybrid live-action/animated—form has largely been a Disney phenomenon, but it’s spreading.  Case in point: DreamWorks’ redo of their good-natured 2010 boy-and-his-dog (sorry, dragon) adventure, a tale obviously inspired by Androcles and the Lion but embellished with scads of action. The new “How to Train Your Dragon” isn’t terrible, and will probably find a large audience among those who’ve become fans of a franchise that’s grown to include sequels and TV series; but it’s a distant also-ran in comparison to the original.

Writer-director Dean DeBlois, who’s been shepherding the property on the big screen since he and Chris Sanders co-wrote and co-directed the first adaptation of Cressida Cowell’s 2003 book, is clearly protective of his initial effort.  This “Dragon” is almost slavishly indebted to the 2010 movie, following its arc religiously, including ample amounts of its dialogue and framing most the images after the model of the animated version.  But he elongates some sequences, italicizing messages in the process, and the switch to live-action necessarily slows the expository stuff down considerably.  The result is that the new telling of the same story is much longer (123 minutes as opposed to 97), draggier and far more ponderous.

Moreover, the switch from animation to live action darkens and bloats cinematographer Bill Pope’s visuals.  That’s evident in the flying sequences, which in the original had a colorful grandeur and sense of sheer fun lacking here.  It might seem progress to set the animated dragon whooshing along, with a now-human rider on an improvised saddle, against realistic backdrops shot, presumably by helicopter and then speeded up.  But in practice the result looks blurred and murky, more hectic than enthralling.

Then there’s the final battle with the huge queen dinosaur, in which Hiccup’s friendship with Toothless, which goes against the grain of his community’s kill-the-dragons lifestyle, is vindicated.  As edited by Wyatt Smith, it’s more protracted here, presumably to show off the effects, and the monster dino is gargantuan.  But the size of the sequence actually works against it, since it lacks the clarity and precision of the animated equivalent and comes to feel like overkill, especially with John Powell’s score blaring in the background.  (Powell, too, is a returnee from the 2010 film.)  The uplift of the epilogue, accentuated by the “awesome” tones Powell has contrived for the flying scenes, is still there, but that’s because it basically repeats what the 2010 movie did verbatim.

In its favor, though, the plot does retain its worthwhile messages about being true to yourself, bonding with others (including critters) and joining together in a common purpose.  Mason Thames is a nicely awkward Hiccup, and plays his scenes with the computer-generated dragon Toothless (not quite as cute this time around) as well as can be expected, as well as those with humans like his father Stoick (Gerard Butler, now seen in hirsute bulk as well as heard in stentorian voice), chatty blacksmith/mentor Gobber (genial Nick Frost), ambitious rival and eventual love interest Astrid (Nice Parker, nicely managing the transition from surly competitor to stalwart partner) and his fellow trainees Fishlegs (Julian Dennison), Snotlout (Gabriel Howell), Ruffnut (Bronwyn James) and Tuffnut (Harry Trevaldwyn).  All the actors, old and young, happily inhabit the Viking world meticulously crafted by production designer Dominic Watkins and costumer Lindsay Pugh and strive mightily to emulate the gestures and inflections of the animated figures that preceded them.

So the question is whether we really needed a live-action/animated movie that essentially replicates a fully animated one that’s only fifteen years old, while dragging it out and darkening it down.  The answer is no, of course, but DeBlois’ commitment to be true to his original vision can be admired, even if you consider the project itself misguided and the realization ultimately disappointing. 

Producers: Jason Michael Berman, Will Raynor, Shaun Sanghani, Jordan Yale Levine, Jordan Beckerman, Chadd Harbold, Cory Thompson and Bannor Michael MacGregor   Director: Evan Ari Kelman   Screenplay: Evan Ari Kelman   Cast: Garrett Hedlund, Hamish Linklater, Brittany Snow, Christian Convery, Tramell Tillman, Raúl Castillo, Stephen Lang, Marc Menchaca, Guy Lockard, Peter McRobbie, Danny Mastrogiogio and Elia Monte-Brown   Distributor: Well Go USA Entertainment

Grade: C+

Here’s a revenge movie different from most made nowadays.  Rather than the simple-mindedness of the “Taken” series and its ilk, Evan Ari Kelman’s debut feature opts for something more morally complicated, fashioning between its two main characters an alink that’s gray instead of black-and-white.  Unfortunately, as it progresses “Barron’s Cove” descends increasingly into melodrama, and its initial promise of sensitive nuance devolves into something much more heavy-handed.

Garrett Hedlund is a powerful presence as Caleb Faulkner, a troubled soul prone to violence who works as an enforcer for his uncle Benji (Stephen Lang), a hard-headed dealer in building supplies in their medium-sized town (read: local crime boss).  Divorced from Jackie (Brittany Snow) but trying to maintain a relationship with his young son Barron (Dante Hale), Caleb suffers an unspeakable tragedy after his uncle demands that he put immediate pressure on some customers who have been doing business with competitors. 

The assignment forces him to skip picking up Barron after school for a father-son outing, and left on his own the boy is waylaid by class bully Ethan (Christian Convery), who takes him to the nearby railroad tracks and ties him down on them.  When his wimpy confederate Phillip (Riley Torres) informs him that a train’s barreling down on them, Ethan tries to untie Barron, but it’s too late, and Barron is killed.

Since Ethan’s the son of local pol Lyle Chambers (Hamish Linklater, oozing malice beneath the smooth exterior he presents in public)–the son of the governor (Peter McRobbie) and a candidate for state office himself, who has Police Chief Alberts (Marc Menchaca) in his pocket—the death is quickly written off as an accident, or even a suicide, despite the misgivings of new detective Navarro (Raúl Castillo), whose desire to investigate further is stymied by his boss.

So Caleb takes matters into his own hands.  Suspicious that Ethan and Phillip, the last boys to see Barron alive, were somehow implicated in his death, he accosts Ethan at school, chases the snotty kid into the parking lot and, after the boy’s hit by a car and left unconscious on the pavement, picks him up, plops him into his van and drives off.  It’s not likely that someone wouldn’t have intervened in such an obvious abduction, but Caleb gets away and takes Ethan to a remote cabin where he intends to terrify him into admitting the truth.

However implausible the kidnapping, Caleb’s act sets up an intriguing dynamic between a damaged, traumatized father who seems on the verge of torturing a kid into confessing to murder and a boy who thus far appears to be the prototypical bad seed—he even taunts Caleb that Barron committed suicide out of hatred for his father.  But it turns out that Ethan was adopted by Chambers at his father’s insistence for political reasons and that he’s been abused by the loathsome guy, as the scars on his back prove.  Caleb’s paternal instinct kicks in although it’s clear that the boy was involved in his son’s death, and Ethan bonds with Caleb, the captor whom he comes to see as a protector against Lyle.  It’s an interesting turn, although it frankly happens too quickly to be entirely credible. 

The politician, meanwhile, goes to extreme lengths to track Caleb down, intending to use the kidnapping to further his election chances at Ethan’s expense.  Meanwhile Navarro, working on his own, stays on the case without official sanction, though when he comes close to capturing Caleb, Ethan intervenes; Caleb also gets help evading his pursuers from Felix (Tramell Tillman), an old friend who sees how Ethan has bonded with his supposed kidnapper.  When Caleb seeks aid from his uncle, however, Benji places profit over family in order to maintain a working relationship with those in political power.  All of this turns “Barron’s Cove” into less of a thought-provoking drama and more of a conventional crime melodrama, especially in a final confrontation scene involving the two very different fathers.  Kelman tries to blend the disparate elements in a final shot, but frankly it comes off a bit precious, even sappy.

He does, however, secure solid performances from two of his three leads.  Hedlund can be criticized for being unrelentingly intense—some will find him over-the-top—but he does capture Caleb’s desperation as a decidedly imperfect man trying to do the right thing.  And Convery manages the shift from totally obnoxious to sympathetic well, even though it’s awfully abrupt.  Linklater, meanwhile, is convincing as a smoothly duplicitous politician but less so in Lyle’s other side as a malevolent conniver.  (We’re only given a hint that he had daddy issues too—a matter than might have been explored.)  The rest of the cast are more than adequate, with Lang doing his usual reliable work and Tillman scoring nicely with simple openheartedness.  Castillo and Menchaca are stuck in stock roles they can’t do much with; the same could be said of Snow, though toward the close she does get to show some shading in a scene where she’s pressured to betray her ex.

Shot in the area around Springfield, Massachusetts, “Barron’s Cove” is given a gritty look by production designer Jordan Crockett and cinematographer Matthew Jensen, and the score by Brivik and James Newberry responds well to the story’s emotional twists.  Hanna Park’s editing is capable, though it can’t camouflage the occasional shortcomings of a limited budget.

“Barron’s Cove” doesn’t deliver on its first-act potential, but its sincerity goes a long way to encourage you to stick with it to the end, even if the last act ultimately proves disappointing.