This is a practically perfect movie, and an instant classic!

Rating: 9/10 (31 December 2018)

After several years' interval I watched this movie again on our DVD copy and, just like the first time around, I loved this. I rank it along with Inside Out, Up, Wall-E, and Toy Story as one of the best animated movies ever made. What do these have in common? It's the combination of a good story to tell; engaging characters to root for; a clever script; and maybe most important, human heart and passion. HTTYD has the advantage of a truly original concept -- I couldn't remember seeing anything like it before. And as far as the story goes, there really isn't a single character in the list that we don't actually like. No villains! Just a conflict between a Viking village and the neighboring dragon population that turns out, in the end, to be all a mistake.
Jay Baruchel perfectly captures the adolescent voice of young Hiccup, the misfit son of village chief Stoick the Vast (Gerard Butler). Hiccup is an apprentice to blacksmith Gobber (Craig Ferguson) and thus (importantly to the plot) knows how to make and build things. Like his friends, he's trying to fit into the standard mold of a rough dragon-killer Viking, but he's not really cut out for it. He is, however, smart and curious, and that leads him onto a much more important path. His peer group of teens includes pseudo-macho Snotlout (Jonah Hill), fat kid Fishlegs (Christopher Mintz-Plasse), Ruffnut and Tuffnut (T.J.Miller, Kristin Wiig) who'd rather fight with each other than anything else, and of course the fierce Astrid (America Ferrara), who Hiccup would do anything to impress. The hilarious series of training sessions for dragon fighting that they go through are among the best scenes in the movie.
The best scenes of all, though, are with Hiccup and Toothless, the Night Fury dragon he accidentally netted during the very first scene. Unknown to everyone else in the village, Hiccup sneaks off to the woods every day to train with Toothless so that they gradually bond together into a seamless dragon and rider team. The many flying scenes that go along with this are wonderfully rendered with animation that is exactly as good as it needs to be. The 2014 sequel (How to Train Your Dragon 2) is more lifelike and detailed, but that does NOT mean it's more effective. The essential thing is that the animation in the sequel leaves less to the imagination -- and engaging our imagination is what a film like this should be all about. The only thing that leaves us sort of scratching our heads is that the "Vikings" all have Scots accents (but only the adults! The teens speak in Standard American.) Nevertheless, it's so charming that it's easy to give that a pass.
There are two other things that put this movie over the top for me. One is John Powell's music score, with evocative and versatile Celtic-style themes that actually stick in the mind. The other has to do with all the attention to detail that make the dragons more real and personable -- for example, the lovable way Toothless cocks his ears asymmetrically, or the way he scorches a little circle in the grass before settling down for a nap (a fun homage to the way dogs turn round and round before doing the same). Toothless has the full range of expressions and body language to turn him into a full-fledged personality. All of these add to the richness of texture of the whole story.
There's hardly a single scene without perfectly timed humor, and the 98-minute run time goes by like the wind with not a single wasted moment. Kudos to directors Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders and to the whole crew for making a tightly constructed masterpiece. The one big advantage of seeing it first in the theater was the 3D rendering, which actually had real added value.