Loved it, but then I'm biased for Vikings, and Dragons.

Saw it for free, had a triple feature day due to all of the free movie tickets in DVDs lately. How to Train Your Dragon was the best of the day, with Alice in Wonderland and Clash of the Titans both sucking.

Please don't listen to Rotten Tomatoes reviews as they are quit useless. What should be rated as a good or great film they don't like..what is actually a dumb film with no substance they will praise. Those critics get it wrong for the most part and really are all a bunch of Rotten tomatoes!

Huh? It's a large collection of critics, it's a general opinion over anything.

How to Train Your Dragon 98% liked it
Transformers 2 20% liked it
Clash of the Titans 29% liked it
Shutter Island 68% liked it

Seems to reflect general consensus quite well.

I'm not sure you understand how Rotten Tomatoes works (see the post above mine). But please list some films that got less than 20% on RT that you find "good or great". I'm sure it will be a source of great entertainment to readers of this thread.

What an awesome first post!

But how will the critics employed by Rotten Tomatoes rate it?

We saw the movie today! What a fun movie. This one I will be getting on release day.

The only Dreamworks animation films I've ever liked have been "Wallace and Gromit", "Flushed Away" and "Chicken Run". So I was quite surprised how much I liked "Dragon". It's 10 times better than those awful "Shrek" movies IMO.

How to Train Your Dragon, on the other hand, had the best hold of the weekend among nationwide releases, easing 13 percent and lifting its total to $133.9 million in 17 days. Playing at 2,165 3D sites compared to Clash's 1,632, nearly 65 percent of its weekend gross was from 3D showings. At its current pace, Dragon could out-gross the $198.4 million total of Monsters Vs. Aliens, another DreamWorks Animation 3D event that also had a late March launch last year, despite having a significantly smaller debut: $43.7 million versus $59.3 million.

Good WOM it seems.

Yeah, despite its modest opening, it has shown some good legs.

Tellingly, none of those were produced by Dreamworks Animation, only distributed.
Of the ones I've seen, the only ones I've liked are the first Shrek movie (the sequels are total garbage), Kung-Fu Panda, Prince of Egypt, even The Bee Movie. I really got to see HTTYD soon.

Saw it on Imax yesterday with my niece. It was good and I enjoyed it, but I wouldn't put it up there with most of Pixar's work (though it is better than Cars). The marketing/ads led me to expect more of a comedy, although it was actually more of an action/adventure film than a comedy - which is fine, but I just don't like being misled by ads.

BTW, why were the Vikings all Scottish? Weren't Vikings supposed to be Norwegian/Swedish?

I saw it again yesterday—in 2D, no 3D here—with a couple of friends and the matinee was at least two thirds full, to our surprise. Not bad for the third weekend; good WOM indeed!

My friends loved the movie, of course.

The only Dreamworks Animation movies I've seen are the first Shrek (which was pretty good, despite what people here are saying) and Kung Fu Panda, which I thought was great...

Any way, I saw HTTYD last week with my two kids. We all liked it.

I'll start with my negatives:
It's a fairly rote/uninspired movie character and story-wise. This starts out as a very by-the-book "triumph of the outsider kid" movie. Also, I found Jay Baruchel's voicing to be extremely nasally and irritating. The protagonist is also a bit of an unlikable, whiny brat for about the first half of the movie.

On the other hand, Toothless is one of the best movie pets I've ever seen. He/she/it is completely adorable, inspiring and loyal backed up with a realistic and beautiful creature design. Toothless basically the pet we all wish we had. Also, the flying sequences are truly spectacular in this movie. The 3D is very effective in most of these scenes and the shot design is superb. Lastly, this is a movie that gets better as it goes along. I didn't find the first half to be very entertaining, but the second half is exciting, well paced and even moving in spots.

Overall, it's a good movie, but I wouldn't put it up there with "Up" or "Fantastic Mr. Fox" as the best "kid's" movie I've seen recently.

Enjoyed the hell out of this yesterday. Just caught a 2D showing, as I'm not too huge of a fan of 3D and didn't want to spend the extra money. I've enjoyed the last few Dreamworks Animation films, Kung Fu Panda and Monsters vs. Aliens, and this probably tops the list. Personally, these last few have been comparable to Pixar and generally more "fun" movies to watch where as Pixar stuff gets a bit sappy for me sometimes.

Since Lilo & Stitch is my favorite Disney movie, i'm happy to enjoy another movie by Chris Sanders after Lasseter booted him from American Dog.

I want a pet dragon

yeah... let's give credit where credit is due, those are from the Aardman Animation Studio

How To Train Your Dragon: 4/5

I really enjoyed it. Much better than I thought it would be. It has a good story with heart, good music (both majestic and gentle and romantic) and some scenes make nice use of 3D. I liked how it doesn't rely on in-your-face pop culture references which ensures the film won't date too much.
I liked the way it ended and wasn't expecting that. And the relationships in the film seemed believable, even though the relationship between Astrid (the girl he fancied) and Hiccup is high-school/middle school students as Vikings (gives you something to relate to), as a whole the film is surprisingly unanachronistic.
I liked the way they showed the relationship between father and son and the way Hiccup could be a hero - but just in a different way to what you'd expect.
Really surprised by how much I liked it

How to Train Your Dragon almost took first place last weekend at the box office (and might have except that Lionsgate fudged the numbers by including Thursday preview results for Kick Ass). And Dragon is projected to take first place for this, the fifth, weekend against weak competition.

It appears that WOM is keeping Dragon alive and well, with a domestic take of $178 million ($355 million worldwide) thus far. From the BOM April 23rd Weekly Report:I took a couple of friends to see it the third weekend. They, in turn, are taking her septuagenarian parents to see it this weekend. For a kids' animated movie to last five weeks in a small, five screen, city is almost unheard of here.

I took my daughter and nieces to see it this afternoon.

We loved it.

***** out of five.

The animation was fantastic, as was the story.

Too bad we didn't get to see it in 3-D, as our local theater was still playing the damned Titans remake.

Saw it in 2D the other night. Took the kids age 4 to it and we all loved it. A few scenes that made them jump but overall they sat through it and are asking to see it again.

Box Office Mojo has an analysis of the unexpected, if gradual, success of How to Train Your Dragon:

How to Gain from 'Dragon'

I haven't seen it because I don't have much interest in it. I've heard from those who have who say the plot is very similar to Avatar. Strange that no one else has pointed that out here.

Perhaps no one has pointed that out because it isn't remotely true. I've seen both and they aren't even vaguely similar. Dragon is a kids' animated fantasy adventure involving Vikings and Dragons. Avatar is a science fiction tale set on a moon around a planet of a distant star. While both have some flying sequences involving dragon-like creatures and were shown in 3D in some theaters, the plot and characters are completely different.

The remarks were made on Facebook but I also found some reviews online making comparisons:

http://filmonic.com/review-train-dragon-2010


http://blog.zap2it.com/thedishrag/20...omparison.html

^ Uh, the only specific comparison was, like lizard mentioned, the flying sequences. Just saying it "compares to Avatar" without mentioning anything specific doesn't lend too much credence to that statement. Maybe I'm missing something.