I started watching this and got about 30 minutes into it and thought to myself, “I know where this is going and it’s going to be very sad before it has a happy ending”. I took a deep breath and waited for the moment when I would have to bite my cheek… but was pleasantly surprised. Yes, there was a bit of sad, but it wasn’t drawn out and the action started almost immediately to take my mind off of it. This is a typical Disney-esque plot-clumsy boy-father doesn’t believe in him-does something unusual-does something good-wins father’s approval-gets the girl. That was the only thing I would fault this for is the typical story.

The graphics were good, the dragons were cute and scary at the same time, so that was a plus. The flying scenes were many to enhance the 3D effect, so there’s a lot of that. Which is good for now, since 3D has become so mainstream. I will be glad to see a new use of 3D other than flying or things flying at you. Coraline had some good 3D.

The end of the movie had a line that kind of left you feeling “let down”. It was something like “the food here is bland and tasteless-so are the people-but our pets are..” great. A more uplifting narrative at the end might have been better.

So I would give this 3.5 stars out of 5 only because of the typical story and the blah ending.