Saying that it's bad because it's animate dis like the cheapest most superficial reason to ever dislike it.

It's bad because its plot is super simplistic and has been done a thousand times before. There is absolutely nothing cerebral to it. It's completely brain dead. Everything that happens in that film can be praedicted thirty minutes before and the one thing in that film that is even a remote plot twist "We're wrong about Dragons" is given away in the title and trailer. "Gee, would Astrid like him in the end? Would he secure his father's respect in the end anyway?", you can answer those things a second after they've been asked because you just know they're going to go with the clichéd ultra happy ending where everything end out fine.

And please do not come with "But it's a film for kids!", that doesn't excuse it. It's a film for dumb kids. There's plenty of material for kids that has a lot more substance to it. Things they could've explored in the film but didn't:

• Monarchies, okay, so we're dealing with a monarchy, we all know there are inhaerent problems with monarchies but the film just waltzes over it. Let's just make Stoick a good reasonable king in the end so the kids don't have to ask themselves the tough quaestions about monarchies. They could've made it a point to not let Hiccup accept a hereditary title of power because he doesn't agree with the concept. They chose not to because that'd be too complex for dumb kids.

• Astrid. So they once raise the idea that Astrid is fed up being treated like "a girl" and then drop it. They could've explored significant social issues about gender roles and the nature of being forced into certain occupations based on what line of the gender divide you're born in. They choose not to however. Because who knows, republican parents might forbid their kids from watching it if kids are stimulated to actually think about this issue.

• Limbs are amputated left and right but no one talks about the emotional impact of losing a limb. He loses his foot at the end, he just shrugs it off, he barely cares. he loses a foot. The emotional impact of having to use a prosthesis for the rest of your life is pretty severe but it's not explored at all.

• Of course in true clichéd fashion, he wins the admiration of his class, not gradually, but basically overnight. Like any film intended for dumb kids, "character development" always happens over a montage against music because realistic gradual change is too hard or something.

The film is shit, dumb, intellectually devoid in every single fucking way. It's not just a film for kids, it's a film for dumb kids. There's plenty of material out there intended for children which isn't so fucking dumb.