Stunning Visuals Can't Overcome a Weaker Story in This Sequel: Our Review of "How To Train Your Dragon 2" (2014)

Directed By: Dean DeBlois (How To Train Your Dragon) 

Starring: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler, Cate Blanchett, America Ferrera, Kit Harrington, Djimon Hounsou

Rating: PG for adventure action and some mild rude humor

Run Time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

Synopsis: Five years after becoming best of friends, a now 20-year-old Hiccup (Baruchel) and his dragon Toothless spend their time exploring the sky and discovering new lands. While on one of these explorations, Hiccup discovers the existence of two warring dragon masters: one a vicious Viking named Drago Bloodfist (Hounsou), who's trying to capture dragons to add to his vast dragon army, the other a mysterious dragon master and protector named Valka (Blanchett)…who happens to be Hiccup's long-lost mother.

REVIEW

Andrew: Hello readers! Earlier this weekend we caught How To Train Your Dragon 2, the sequel to 2010's hit Dreamworks Animation film How To Train Your Dragon (obviously). This is a film that was released last weekend but we weren't able to catch it until now.

Sarah, I don't know about you but this wasn't necessarily one that I was jumping in anticipation for, but more than anything I was curious to see what it would be like in 3D. What about you?

Sarah: Oh I was really excited for this one! I really liked the first one so I was looking forward to seeing where they would take this. I was curious about the 3D as well, and I am so glad that we decided to see it that way. 

From a visual standpoint, this movie was amazing. They were able to do some really cool things with the effects and it just made the whole world come alive. All of the new dragons were very cool and it was just fun to see what all the characters looked like now that it's been five years between stories.

One of the many stunning visuals in HTTYD2 is Hiccup's ability to fly alongside Toothless.

 But I have to say, the story lacked a little bit for me. We get to meet Hiccup's mother, Valka (Cate Blanchett), who everyone thought was dead. Nope! Turns out she's just running this big dragon Humane Society and decided that was more important than her baby. I don't know about you but that just never set right with me. And the way Hiccup just kind of accepts it right away? Like what is that?!

86th Academy Awards Full Predictions!

Andrew: Hello dear readers! Tonight is the big night! The 86th Academy Awards a.k.a. The Oscars are tonight in Hollywood, and for the third year in a row Sarah and I will be competing against one another to see who can correctly predict the most awards.

Sarah: The past five days we've had fun posting articles breaking down a number of the bigger categories and then giving our predictions for them. Today we're posting our full predictions prior to our Live Blog of tonight's show!

A: For reference's sake, last year I correctly predicted 18 out of the 24 categories and Sarah correctly predicted 17 of the 24. Here's to hoping we both do better this year! Check out all of our predictions after the jump!

86th Academy Awards Analysis and Predictions: Best Actor and Best Actress

Andrew: Hello readers! Day Three of our coverage leading up to this Sunday's 86th Academy Awards is here. Yesterday we discussed the categories for Best Animated Feature, Best Song, Best Score and Best Visual Effects (which you can read HERE if you want to give those a gander), and today we'll be delving into the two big acting categories - Best Lead Actor and Best Lead Actress. 

Sarah, because of the film we just watched last night in our attempts to get caught up on Oscar films, let's kick things off with the Best Lead Actress category shall we?

Best Lead Actress

The nominees for Best Lead Actress are:

- Amy Adams, American Hustle

- Cate Blanchett, Blue Jasmine

- Sandra Bullock, Gravity

- Judi Dench, Philomena

- Meryl Streep, August: Osage County

For a while now the consensus has been that Cate Blanchett is the easy front-runner in this category, Sarah. Last night we were finally able to see her performance as a woman having a bit of a mental breakdown following the arrest and death of her Bernie Madoff-like husband. After watching Blue Jasmine do you think she's the easy call here or does she have some true competition?