"We're Vikings. It's an occupational hazard."

Rating: 7/10 (9 November 2017)

Animated features are usually very colorful and offer a whole lot of fun, but I don't understand how they manage to score so high against your more prevalent live action movies. I think it has to do with viewers rating each one on a personal standard against other animated films, with the result having pictures like this winding up with a rating above 8.0. So as I write this, the film ranks higher in the IMDb Top #250 than "Platoon", "Hotel Rwanda" and 1959's "Ben Hur". Anyone see the irony in that? I don't know that there's a way to fix that other than to separate animated movies into their own category, but I don't know if that would be fair either. Anyway, that's my little side spiel.
"How to Train Your Dragon" is in fact a highly entertaining flick for all members of the family, with lots of dazzling action and likable characters. I particularly liked the names the writers came up with for the various types of dragons, like Nadder Heads, Gronckles, Two-Headed Zipplebacks and Monstrous Nightmares. It turns out our feature creature is a rare and never before seen Night Fury, the ultimate in dragon lore as it were. I was kind of expecting more along the lines of a green scaled monster myself, but good old Toothless had a nice appeal once you got to know him. I thought the name 'Toothy' might have been a better one for Hiccup to come up with, but the irony worked well enough.
When it came time to battle the formidable monster dragon from deep in the mountain nest, the thing looked more like a dinosaur and it looked like the Vikings might have finally met their doom. But that would never happen in a Dreamworks film, if it had there wouldn't have been a couple of sequels already. The battle scenes are some of the finest animation you're likely to ever come across, and of course, all's well that ends well with Hiccup, Astrid, Stoick the Vast and all the other colorful Viking characters.