Movie Review #41 Rise of the Guardians (2012)

- 20% Christmas movie

Dreamworks is at it again and this time they didn't even even take off a Pixar flick, though I'll give some time for Pixar to take off this movie. In any case Dreamworks has, in my opinion, been the bigger budget in voice actors but has less bang for your buck when it comes to story and even sometimes animation. Not that I'm taking a hit at Dreamworks animation department, but I feel that for the most part it is second place to Pixar. But here we are with an almost Christmas movie from Dreamworks and Pixar had their summer blockbuster with Brave.

I should probably apologize to those who thought I'd do a “real” Christmas movie, and while this movie contains Santa Claus, I wouldn't really call it a Christmas movie to watch with the family. More so since this movie takes place at unspecific times for the most part and Easter is mentioned most of all, so really I think the release date for this movie is also misguided. Why release a movie Nov 21st (yeah I waited to release this review) when your movie contains just as much about Easter? I don't know if pushing it out for Easter would have helped sales at all but I certainly went into the movie thinking I was getting a Christmas movie.

The movie puts some twists on our childhood memories of characters. The Sandman is a mute chubby thing composed of sand, the tooth fairy is a humming bird-human female cross, the Easter bunny is an Australian rabbit who uses a boomerang and Santa Claus is a two sword-wielding Russian-esque who is riddled with tattoos. I'm not sure if they were going for edgy or silly but Santa more than anyone else had some cute lines so I'll go with silly which I believe is the better suggestion as this is a kids movie after all! To be honest I thought most of the characters were rather silly looking and the thought process on their overall designs should be rechecked. The story barely explained their looks. I mean why did Santa have tattoos of Naughty and Nice on his arms? Okay for the joke because he checks his list. Is that it? Why was he sort of Russian? Well, this is sort of explained by in such small detail it is really left up to the viewer to fill in the blanks and it is this way for a majority of the film. All the main “Guardians” are given such small introductions they are hard to get any kind of empathy or even a cheer when they do a deed, all but the unlikely main character of Jack Frost. While he is the central character of the movie, even he (like I think all too often in Dreamworks movies) is only scratching at the surface of interesting. A young adult (18 years old, the script claims) is selected some 300 years ago to be Jack Frost, the bringer of Ice and Snow. Why was he selected? Well you better be interested because that's the entire substory of the movie and if my own sentence didn't get you wondering you're in a tough spot because the movie does a rather poor job of making you want to know why he was picked. They have a great heartfelt scene explaining why but it is only then you might care. There is no proper build up. You just don't care why for the entire first hour of the movie.

You wouldn't know it, but these Yetis are scene stealers

While on the other hand as I mentioned before the voice acting cast is great, many of the voices are of well known, award-winning actors, many of which I've mentioned here before. Jack Frost (voiced by Chris Pine) does a great job, although for half the movie I thought it was Sam Witwer (probably just wishful thinking). Jude Law is recognizable from the first syllable uttered from character Pitch. Hugh Jackman plays the ever stereotypical borderline racist toward the Australian Easter bunny named Bunny while Santa (who is officially named North in the movie) was voiced by Alec Baldwin. They are all top-notch actors who bring their A game as to be expected. The visuals, while I was only able to watch this in 2D were great and I never felt that Pixar could do better, of which I'm guilty of thinking during many Dreamworks movies, though let us be honest, many people do especially when they make similar movies (Finding Nemo/Shark's Tale, Bug's Life/Antz).

This is a children's movie no doubt about it, while it has bits of humour and strange design decisions it's more for children than anything an adult would love to see (see a majority of Pixar flicks) there is a solid story deep within the movie but it only scratches at the surface and left me with nagging questions rather than thinking about the simple lesson learned from the movie.

I gave it a 6/10

PS: I feel as if Santa's tattoo were in some way similar to Harry Powell's (played by Robert Mitchum) in The Night of the Hunter (1955). Which is not a comparison meant for children.