Dragon Hill (original name La Colina del Dragón) is a 2002 Spanish animated movie, directed by Ángel Izquierdo and written by Antonio Zurera of Hanna-Barbera fame.
To summarize the plot, there's an isolated place called Dragon Hill that is the home for dragons. There is a woman called Maude who tries to make them technologically advanced, and a wizard called Septimus who was imprisoned there and who wants to escape; to do so he somehow makes a boy called Kevin, who wants to be a knight, end up in Dragon Hill too. It gets confusing from here.
There are two sequels, El Cubo Mágico and El corazón del roble.
Contains examples of:
- Aesop Amnesia: The whole point of the first movie is that its absolutely not safe to keep Septimus on Dragon Hill. Then why the Hell does the sequel concludes that the best thing is to keep him there!?
- All-CGI Cartoon: The two sequels eschew traditional animation for CGI. Notably, El Cubo Mágico's 2D animation was already dismal compared to the first movie's and the film had multiple CGI assets, so this was inevitable.
- Dark Is Not Evil: As much as cute as Elphi and his family are, most other dragons are fairly ugly and monstrous, and yet most are decent. Somewhat subverted with a certain wyvern like dragon, which at times proves to be a threat but is chaotically neutral (somewhat).
- Elemental Powers: The classical elements are well present in both movies: in the first, you need to use one of them to get into Dragon Hill, while on the second the magic cube reacts to either one of them (see
Fridge Logic below), creating an extremely Eldritch Abomination. Also Septimus uses what appears to be light beams or something like that. - Extreme Omnivore: Tristan, the pig like servant of Septimus.
- Genie in a Bottle: The second movie has one, who uses simple animation used again and again.
- Mind Screw: Aside from the occasional Big-Lipped Alligator Moment, the plot, especially that of the first movie, will make the viewers more confused than anything.
- Our Dragons Are Different: Western looking, but thats about it; there's absolutely no consensus in their physical form. The main dragon characters (Elphi and his family) resemble slightly komodo dragons with an arrow like tail tip, ridiculously small wings and a mammalian face akin to that of Goofy (only tooth and dog-nose less).
- Schizo Tech
- Sealed Evil in a Can: Septimus in the first movie, the Magic Cube in the later.
- Shout-Out: The animation resembles Universal's last known animated movies (aka The Land Before Time and Balto sequels); in fact, at least in Portugal it was distributed by Universal Pictures (don't ask why)
- The Stinger: The first movie has a series of funny "bloopers" during the credits; see above.
