The most brilliantly-rendered creature in film

Rating: 10/10 (7 November 2010)

I missed HTTYD in its theatrical release, but being the animation enthusiast that I am, and having heard some positive reviews, I was happy to see the film on DVD. My modestly positive expectations were greatly surpassed.
My first impression was that the visuals were exceptional; the night shots of the village and the contrast with fire from the dragons' attack was very impressive. The animators managed to do a very good job of rendering the clear, crisp feeling of a cold, starry night. The level of detail was remarkable; textures of rough, weathered wood and battered metal looked very authentic.
The story is very familiar; essentially "local goofball makes good". So, being that we've all seen it before, why is it so good here? That technical excellence helps; this really feels like a world we haven't really seen before, but it's rendered gorgeously. Lush forests are contrasted with forbidding rocky coasts. The characters are great too; Jay Baruchel makes the central character Hiccup sound sufficiently nebbishy, and is ably supported by Gerard Butler as Hiccup's imposing father Stoick and Craig Ferguson as Cobber.
When the story opens, Hiccup's home island of Berk is being attacked by marauding dragons. Hiccup is not the most manly of Berk's inhabitants, and is beset by a tendency to daydream. He has created a device that he believes will help bring down the attackers, and sneaks out to try it in battle. It works--Hiccup knows he's brought something down but it lands too far away for him to investigate--but the unintended consequences cause considerable damage. Hiccup's father Stoick is clearly disappointed.
When Hiccup goes out the next day to try to find what he might have brought down, he finds a dragon that no one has ever seen before; a dreaded Night Fury. But its tail is injured, and it cannot escape the sinkhole where it landed.
Hiccup comes to name his find "Toothless", and the relationship they build is central to the film. Toothless is an amazingly-imagined creature who expresses an incredible range of emotions over the course of the story. As Hiccup gains Toothless' trust, he learns far more about dragons as a species than his fellows at home ever knew.
So, more cliché, Hiccup befriends Toothless, trains him in secret, and eventually becomes the first human to actually RIDE a dragon. But this process is told so convincingly and beautifully that it comes across very naturally.
The story has some nice twists, too, like when Hiccup discovers that the dragons are not merely stealing the villagers' food for their own sake.
There are great messages in the film. The usual "be true to yourself" stuff, sure, but deeper ones about trust and loyalty as well. They all come organically out of the story, rather than feeling imposed.
Ever since the original Shrek, I knew that Dreamworks could compete with Pixar when they really felt like it. The journey's been uneven but they've continued to produce some very good work on occasion. This movie, though, is maybe the first one that can be considered with Pixar's very best movies. The next Oscars in 2011 may finally see an animated film win as Best Picture; How to Train Your Dragon and Toy Story 3 are both good enough to be contenders. With its dazzling technical merits, its well-written story and its great, original characters, I think I'd vote for the dragons.