Tears of pure joy streaming down my face. Yaaahhh!

Rating: 10/10 (1 April 2010)

O.K. Here is the deal. I am a normal guy. I watch football. I run marathons sometimes. I fix my car. I only intended to glance at this movie to see if it would be appropriate for my five-year-old. I ended up staying for the whole movie.
During the flying scenes, with the perfectly-suited Galic music cheering us on in the background, I had tears of purest joy streaming down my face from the, raw, visceral emotion of it. I thought of Gerard Manley Hopkins and the Windhover: "The dapple-dawn-drawn falcon in his riding .../.. High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing" Perfect movie making. I have to say, I've seen nothing like these scenes, and I cry at movies every, I dunno, twenty years or so?
Let's be clear: this is an animated movie for kids. The story is straightforward, at the level that, yes, my five-year-old will understand. The music is very good. The story-animation is so well done that it just falls into the background as the story unfolds. It is not "artful" in the way of, say, Miyazaki, but it is still wildly creative and yields a magical world of ocean, rugged northern lands, and forest. The animation of the physics of flight and motion, and the details of emotional expression are exceptional. The voice actors are interesting, and without the sappy voices, and contrived humor we have found in some other recent animated movies. There is no pretense here of the movie trying to be something it is not. There are inconsistencies in the accents, and holes in the plot if you care to look. But, and this is the important but, the story, and especially the *experience* of this movie transcends both the genre and its shortcomings. Even if it is just for the highlights as one is soaring above ocean and earth on the back of a dragon, this is a movie for way more than just kids.
At the end of the movie, most everyone cheered, and half stood up and cheered, which I also have not seen before.
I recommend this movie as genre art that is exceptionally well done, an uplifting evening's entertainment. You MUST see it in 3D! Yaaaaayyyy! Who-hoooh!