It's the Snoggletog holiday in the Viking town of Berk. Their dragons suddenly leave. The only one left seems to be Toothless. Hiccup installs a new tail and Toothless also leaves. Later, Hiccup happens upon Meatlug who had been chained up by Fishlegs. Meatlug escapes and carries Hiccup to a secret volcanic island where the dragons are hatching the next generation.

It's a perfectly good holiday special for this children's franchise. It's a continuation rather than a new chapter. There are no real drama and there is no villain or opposition in this short. It's fine for anyone who likes the movies.

This is a half-hour (well, actually a little over 20 minutes) animated short film which came out four years ago, between the two first "How to Train Your Dragon" movies. The voice cast are the actors from the feature films as well. The writer and director have very long and prolific careers in the industry already, so here they are getting a good chance with a prestigious project that could even result in them being in the same position in future movies if the HTTYD-franchise runs for a couple more entries. Sadly, I have to say I was fairly underwhelmed by this short film. I don't think it is really better than any the episodes of the series. The heart and great moments from the two feature films are almost completely missing here. The relationship between Hiccup and Toothless gets elaborated on a bit further, but nothing that really goes much under the surface. The dragon babies are cute and maybe the best thing about this film. But beyond the cuteness, there isn't really a lot either. Dragons fly away and people wonder where they have gone. And that exploding dragon egg storyline was actually pretty bad and just added some "animated special effects" to the movie, but did nothing at all otherwise apart from randomly bringing some chaos to Berk. Disappointing short film. Not recommended.

I loved the first "How to Train Your Dragon", so I was definitely going to give this "Dragons: Gift of the Night Fury" a go as well.

Despite it being a very short animated movies, about 22 minutes or so, it was actually still quite good. The animation and CGIs were as cool as in the previous movie. And there is still so many awesome details in every scene.

The story was not that bad, despite it being limited to less than 30 minutes. And I assume that it is something that could have potential to become a part of children's Christmases everywhere.

I just have a gnawing sensation that releasing such a short movie is sort of digging a bit too deep into people's pockets. Why couldn't something like this have been an extra on a collector's edition of the first movie? But hey, money does make the world go round.

If you liked "How to Train Your Dragon", then you definitely should check out this part of the saga as well.