After three weeks of domination by the Disney live-action remake “Lilo & Stitch,” it’s time for the top spot at the domestic box office to be taken over by the Dreamworks live-action remake “How to Train Your Dragon.” It feels like it’s too soon to do a remake of a movie from only 15 years ago (Disney has yet to do one from inside of 20 years), but the studio has to promote a new attraction at the Universal Orlando theme park. Movies are always a business, of course, but this one’s existence seemed to be especially motivated by money-grubbing. Fortunately, the quick turnaround means that some of the creative voices of the original, like writer/director Dean DeBlois (also a writer/director of the 2002 “Lilo & Stitch”) are still around to work on this movie, leading to much of the original’s charm being retained.

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The story remains the same: young Viking Hiccup (Mason Thames) desperately wants to impress his chief father, Stoick (Gerard Butler, also carrying over from the original), who seems to care more about killing dragons than his own son. Using a crude homemade weapon, Hiccup manages to hit a dreaded Night Fury, which crash-lands miles away. But nobody sees either the hit or the dragon, and Hiccup is regarded as a nuisance around his island homeland, including by his crush Astrid (Nico Parker).

Hiccup is soon remanded to dragon-hunting training under family friend Gobber (Nick Frost). It looks like Hiccup will screw that up like he screws up everything else, when he discovers the Night Fury wounded on an uninhabited part of the island. He has the opportunity to finish off the dragon, but he just can’t kill the scared creature. Instead he befriends the dragon, which he names Toothless, in the process learning about dragons and how to train them for a mutually-beneficial relationship. This makes him a standout in his hunting class, and even his father starts showing him rare affection. There’s potential for him to graduate at the top of his class, which will earn him a ceremony where he “gets” to kill a dragon in front of his father and the whole tribe. The problem is that he no longer wants to kill dragons, knowing from Toothless that humans and dragons can co-exist. What can he do to make everybody happy?

It worked to the film’s advantage that I’d forgotten a lot about the original since I last saw it. I remembered the broad strokes, obviously the dragon gets trained, but I mostly just remembered the original for being sweet, having a cool visual style, and most of the jokes landing, even if I forgot what most of those jokes were. The new film is sweet, it has a cool visual style (Toothless’s big green eyes are as adorable as ever), and most of the jokes land.

“How to Train Your Dragon” isn’t immune to some of the problems that notoriously plague live-action remakes of animated films. Certain visual gags don’t work well without the fluid movements of animation. It can be distracting that much of the cast, especially the teenagers, are clearly kids raised in the modern era. And I had to grit my teeth while Stoick had to learn the same lessons about communication all over again. But the movie pulled itself up to a recommendation with its stunning visual style and undeniable heart. I don’t want Dreamworks to get too reliant on the live-action remake formula (and Disney is welcome to buck the trend whenever they want), but in this instance, they did it pretty well.

Grade: B-

“How to Train Your Dragon” is rated PG for sequences of intense action and peril. Its running time is 125 minutes.

Contact Bob Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu.