A really nice movie, great animation and an entertaining story.

Rating: Null/10 (24 October 2010)

There are lots of common elements of a good story here, a sweet but smallish boy who wants to be more like his larger than life dad, other kids not respecting him, finding a lost and injured creature, the two of them bond and help out the rest. We have seen it with lost horses, lost dogs, just about any kind of animal. But a dragon??
That basic storyline is applied here to a fantasy world in an undefined time. The village has been there for a very long time, but all the buildings are new. We are puzzled by this brain teaser but soon realize why. The area is populated by a variety of dragons, which periodically raid their town, carry away animals, and burn the buildings with the fire from their mouths. So the main occupation in this town is dragon fighters. And builders.
There the dragon fighters look like Vikings, and sail, but they speak like Scots. Gerard Butler is the leader of the dragon fighters, as Stoick. His teenage son is Jay Baruchel (bah-roo-shell) as the small and weak Hiccup. Fellow Scot Craig Ferguson is his right hand man, Gobber. And America Ferrera is the cute girl, Astrid, who wants to be a dragon fighter also.
This is a highly entertaining, animated fantasy movie.
SPOILERS: There is a particular kind of dragon that is a deadly shot, but comes only at night and no one has seen one. But Hiccup designs a kind of catapult, and he shoots one down. Finding it the next day, it is injured, missing part of its tail guidance system and can't fly right. It is a beautiful dragon, sleek and black, much like a stealth fighter. Hiccup becomes friends with it, brings it fish for food, and fabricates a replacement part for its tail, which Hiccup has to control himself, thus he flies it. He goes back to the village and becomes the one who learns how to train dragons, and in the end they become useful friends in the village, after the super giant dragon hiding in the mountain is destroyed and the other dragons no longer needed to raid food to feed the giant dragon.