Box office How to Train Your Dragon topped the North American box office with $43.7 million in its first weekend of release. The film grossed $217.6 million in the United States and Canada and $277.3 million in foreign countries with a worldwide total of $494.9 million. It is the fifth-highest-grossing animated film of 2010, behind
Toy Story 3 with $1,063.2 million,
Shrek Forever After with $752.6 million,
Tangled with $576.6 million, and
Despicable Me with $543.1 million and the
10th-highest-grossing movie of 2010. , the
How to Train Your Dragon series has grossed over $1 billion worldwide.
Critical response How to Train Your Dragon received critical acclaim upon its release. The film was widely praised for its animation, screenplay, voice performances, musical score, and 3D sequences. Review aggregator
Rotten Tomatoes reports that of critics gave the film a positive review, based on reviews from professional critics, with an overall rating average of . The website's critical consensus states, "Boasting dazzling animation, a script with surprising dramatic depth, and thrilling 3-D sequences,
How to Train Your Dragon soars." On
Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 75 out of 100 based on 37 reviews from critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews. Audiences polled by
CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. Matt Risley of
Variety wrote a highly positive review, hailing it as "undoubtedly Dreamworks' best film yet, and quite probably the best dragon movie ever made".
James Berardinelli of
ReelViews gave it 3.5 out of 4 stars, and complimented both the "technically proficient" animation and the "witty, intelligent, surprisingly insightful script". Claudia Puig of
USA Today noted that the film had "surprising depth", and praised the "sweetly poignant tale of friendship between man and animal".
Entertainment Weekly film critic
Owen Gleiberman praised the film's usage of 3-D in all "its breathtaking spatial and emotional possibilities"; he gave a rating of A−.
Richard Corliss of
Time Magazine stated that "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." Both
Roger Ebert of
The Chicago Sun-Times and
A. O. Scott of
At The Movies felt that character and story development had been sidelined in favor of the visual spectacle. Ebert criticized the lengthy "aerial battles between tamed dragons and evil ones", but did note that "[the film] is bright, good-looking, and has high energy". Similarly, Scott commended the cinematography, observing that the "swooping and soaring [was] worth the price of a ticket."
Rolling Stone film critic
Peter Travers, giving it three out of four stars, wrote that the film "works enough miracles of 3-D animation to charm your socks off." Roger Moore of
The Orlando Sentinel, who gave the film 2½ stars out of 4, felt that the film's inclusion of more dramatic subject matter, instead of more comedic themes, was to the detriment of the film, making it a "waste of a funny book, some very funny actors and some darned witty animation."
Village Voice film critic
Ella Taylor also gave a more negative review of the film, describing it as an "adequate but unremarkable animated tale".
Accolades At the
83rd Academy Awards,
How to Train Your Dragon received nominations for
Best Animated Feature and
Best Original Score. The film's other nominations include fourteen
Annie Awards (winning ten), two
British Academy Film Awards, a
Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and a
Golden Globe Award. == Sequels and franchise ==