How To Train Your Dragon

It's a foolproof scheme for picture making: take the plot elements of favorite movies, paint the concoction with bright colors so it looks like the zazziest customized car, set it running at NASCAR speed, and you have How to Train Your Dragon.

What we have here is an exhilarating epic that mixes comedic and touching moments with some of the best action sequences ever created with CGI animation.

Toothless has the one precious ingredient that's missing from so many of Hollywood's contemporary animated characters: an air of mystery.

Smartly dispensing with the usual hubbub of pop references that dot many of these films, the movie offers touching, quiet moments and imaginative, high-flying beauty. It's fantastically entertaining.

It's a Harry Potter-meets-Avatar adventure that should delight most children and adults.

Technically proficient and featuring a witty, intelligent, surprisingly insightful script, How to Train Your Dragon comes close to the level of Pixar's recent output while easily exceeding the juvenilia Dreamworks has released in the last nine years.

It's charming, funny and a lot like Avatar, though less solemn and an hour shorter.

Based on the book by Cressida Cowell, the movie from writer-director Dean Dubois is funny, well-drawn and imaginatively structured so that adults need have no fear about taking the kids to it.

Instead of relying on dizzying gimmicks, Dreamworks' new animated feature simply revels in the sheer heart-pumping pleasure of watching action unfold through those Buddy Holly-style glasses.

Undoubtedly Dreamworks' best film yet, and quite probably the best dragon movie ever made.

Everything from the angle of the shot to the speed of the editing projects an end visual that feels like you're either on Toothless' back or you get an outsider perspective of just how fast he's flying.

What helps elevate How to Train Your Dragon above the glut of other recent animated fare is its message about tolerance and realizing that your enemy may not be as different as you think.