Amazing movie! Can't say enough about it!

Rating: 10/10 (15 September 2015)

In 1982, Universal Pictures brought us E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. In 1999, Warner Bros. brought us The Iron Giant, by far my favorite 2D animated movie of all time. Next in a long line of a-boy-and-his-whatever stories was DreamWorks Animation's instant classic, How to Train Your Dragon.
I was finally able to see this movie by myself on DVD on my XBOX 360 on Christmas Eve, and I loved it.
This would now have to be my favorite DreamWorks animated movie ever.
This visually incredible movie tells the story of a teenage Viking named Hiccup (played by Jay Baruchel) who is seen as kind of an outcast by his tribe. One night, Hiccup designs a device that can shoot down a dragon. And sure enough, the dragon he manages to catch is the Night Fury, the most mysterious and the most feared out of all of the other dragons. Hiccup is wandering through the woods the next day, and he finds the dragon still trapped in the net, and Hiccup attempts to kill this creature, but he can't bring himself to do it and instead frees him. From there, a friendship is formed, reminiscent of the relationship formed between Hogarth Hughes and a 50-foot-tall giant robot in The Iron Giant. Back in HTTYD, Hiccup actually learns that dragons are friends, not foes; and he also comes to realize that "Everything we know about them (the dragons) is wrong."
I thought this was a wonderfully done animated movie, and DreamWorks deserves either a pat on the back, a fist pound, or a round of applause. But there are some scenes in this movie that remind me of scenes from other animated movies. Like, for example, the opening scene where we first see the dragons attacking the village. That scene kind of reminded me of Titan A.E., when the Drej attack Earth and the people try to evacuate. There are a lot of scenes from How to Train Your Dragon that remind me much more of The Iron Giant. And Hiccup, to me, looks very much like a teenage Hogarth Hughes that, when he was still the young nine-year-old kid we all know him as, must've slipped through a wormhole and went back in time to the time of Vikings and Dragons and sort of became this character over about seven or eight years.
There are some other great characters in this movie, like Gerard Butler plays Hiccup's dad, Stoick the Vast. America Ferrera kicked butt and took names as Astrid. Jonah Hill, only about eight months before he starred as the bad guy in Megamind, is at his comedic best as Snotlout. I also noticed that Christopher Mintz-Plasse (aka McLovin') lent his voice to this project as Fishlegs. T.J. Miller and Kristen Wiig are also in this movie as the twins, Ruffnut and Tuffnut, who are comical and sassy, but still very funny. Oh, and don't forget Craig Ferguson plays Gobber, Hiccup's mentor at the blacksmith shop and of course, I guess you can say, he is also a "teacher" at Dragon Training class. P.S.; How come all these Vikings have Scottish accents? That really makes no sense to me, but still...
Overall, I thought that this movie was visually stunning, and I think if I would've wanted to see this movie when it was first out in theaters back in March, I would've seen it in 3D because it just would've been cool to see it in this big format. How to Train Your Dragon is not just a movie for kids, but it's also something that the entire family will enjoy. Go ahead and buy or rent this movie on DVD and watch it with your family. I promise you won't be disappointed once you see it. This movie will make you laugh, make you cry, and it'll keep you on the edge of your seat, especially near the end. This movie is, in a word, "amazing." It's by far, to me, the single best animated movie that DreamWorks has done, and I hope they have the same thing for the sequel, which is scheduled for release in 2014. This animated movie "soars" over any other 3D animated movie ever made, and I recommend it to anybody, parents and children alike, who wants to be blown away just like I was.