How to Train Your Dragon: Critic Reviews

It has winningly Potteresque teen-dragon-slayer classes, a queen-bee dragon as grand as Godzilla, and a layer of age-of-terror allegory about the ignorance bred by jingoism.

Tenderness, beauty and exhilaration are the movie's great strengths.

An enjoyable family movie, with some great flight sequences - and there's an interestingly realistic sense of the dangers involved in risking your neck for others.

It's a thrilling action-adventure saga with exhilarating 3-D animation, a clever comedy with witty dialogue, a coming-of-age tale with surprising depth and a sweetly poignant tale of friendship between man and animal.

At a time when Hollywood seems to be releasing everything this side of Dead Sea Scrolls documentaries in 3-D, How to Train Your Dragon is a briskly paced computer-animated entertainment that uses the format to maximum effect, the way Avatar does.

By Odin, they make it work.

Honestly, it would take several more dimensions to craft something special out of this adequate but unremarkable animated tale.

Though the dragons are cool in their various forms and the battle scenes are epic and exciting, watching two former foes become friends is what really makes the story fly.

How to Train Your Dragon uses its whiz-bang technology to amplify feelings as well as dimension and scale. The big optical wow is only the half of it.

The film truly starts to soar when Hiccup takes his first ride on Toothless.

One of the pleasures in this wise, emotionally bold PG ride is there's nary a wink, nudge or nod to popular culture.

It devotes a great deal of time to aerial battles between tamed dragons and evil ones, and not much to character or story development. But it's bright, good-looking and has high energy.

The superb cinematographer Roger Deakins served as a visual consultant, pushing the palette to an unusually burnished and sophisticated level. Kids may not notice the visual texture consciously, but adults will. Or should.

Codirectors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders understand more about visualizing the joy of flight than James Cameron ever will.

[It] The notion of having a pet dragon -- just like a pet whale, or a pet lion -- is a scenario that should appeal to children of all ages.

The 3-D throughout How to Train Your Dragon is perhaps the best match with animation yet -- exhilarating when it's supposed to be, yet integrated into the film rather than seemingly pasted on.

Directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders, working from a script based on Cressida Cowell's books, should be credited for the way they develop the friendship between Hiccup and Toothless.

A thrilling drama interspersed with amusing comedic elements (rather than the other way around).

The one interesting aspect of the movie, apart from the design, is that it puts so much effort into projecting a moral, such as it is.

It's more coming-of-age dramedy or "everything about your world view is wrong" message movie than it is a comedy. And that seems like a waste of a funny book, some very funny actors and some darned witty animation.

With its messages about acceptance, respect and tolerance, How To Train Your Dragon also brings some lessons of its own, including some valuable tools for doing battle with dragons, should the need arise.

This dog can hunt. On the ground. Way-way up in the air. Swimming through clouds breathing fire. Imagine Old Yeller on a hundred pep pills.

A lively though disjointed 3D cartoon that never quite entices an audience to invest emotionally in its fantasy world.