Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Review:Rise of the Guardians

Chris Pine as Jackson Overland Frost or Jack Frost
Alec Baldwin as Nicholas St. North (Santa Claus), 
Hugh Jackman as E. Aster Bunnymund (Easter Bunny)
Isla Fisher as Toothiana or Tooth for short (Tooth Fairy)
Jude Law as Pitch Black (The Boogeyman)

Where are you likely to find a possibly demented Russian Cossack, A giant Ninja Rabbit and a human humming bird all in one place?  In a Dreamworks animated feature, that's where. 

The story revolves around the major holidays and the "Guardians" who protect the institutions against those who would see the holidays disbanded and no longer practiced.


Into this mix comes Jackson Overland Frost or Jack Frost one of many magical entities that have powers that are associated with holidays or times of the year.  Jack of course brings the cold and frost which seems to be all that he knows about his former life.  He knows that he is immortal,  but nothing about his former life. All he knows is that the guardians have all but ignored him over the centuries.   The Guardians find out that the ancient boogy man "Pitch Black" is planning to destroy children's faith in the Guardians with nightmares.  He convinces Jack that the Guardians do not care about him at all.  With Jack's help the Guardians are weakened as children stop believing in them.

Through another misadventure Jack begins to regain his memory and with the aid of the only child left who believes in the Guardians, beats Pitch Black.

As you can see, the plot is fairly simplistic but has enough twists to set itself somewhat apart from the totally derivative children's fare.  The computer 3d animation is more than adequate giving the viewer a visual treat in motion and color.

Extras on disk are slim.  One inclusion that bares notice is Paperman.  From the wikipedia:
  • Paperman is a 2012 black-and-white 3D hand-drawn/computer animated romantic comedy short film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios
  • The short won both an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film at the 85th Academy Awards and the Annie Award for Best Animated Short Subject at the 40th Annie Awards 
Here is the wiki on Paperman  HERE

4 comments:

kallamis said...

If I ever get around to seeing this, as usual, I'll be on the wrong bloody side again. I myself would like to see nearly all of the holidays removed forever. We don't even celebrate the right ones anyway. And for those that don't know me, those would be things like the first Apollo mission, the first Shuttle launch, etc etc etc.

Dave Tackett said...

Paul: I'll probably see this one eventually; it looks OK, but not great.

Kallamis: I'm with you on the first Moon landing being worthy of being a worth a holiday (Assuming you're talking about Apollo 11 and not the tragic Apollo 1), but the first shuttle mission isn't really inspiring enough (IMHO).

Beam Me Up said...

Dave, yeah that about covers it...good, but not great.

Listen Kall you ole humbug, the movie has the trappings of holidays, but more of the older feel, not the commercialized crap we call holidays today, but the movie at its' core is NOT about them, just carrying enough of the trappings to allow children to identify with. For me, it was those few years when life is full of strange and wonderful things. The movie takes that and rolls out a character to hang those feelings on to. And the characters are just different enough that one almost thinks they are privy to the inner workings. We have all seen the results of movies that were blatantly depicting the glitzy commercialized monstrosities of today... this one at least tries to break out of the mold and almost succeeds.

As for the WRONG holidays...you bet...where is our Apollo 1 memorial or the other? Where is Neal Armstrong federal holiday, they have a damn Columbus Day fer Christ sake! John Glenn? The shuttles? and I am just getting started!

kallamis said...

LOL. Humbug. Hahahaha. Cool, now I see what you mean. I'll have to check that out then. It looked cool on the previews, but you know where I live, so you can imagine the kinds of things I hear here about movies. And you definitely made it sound more interesting again than what the people around here did. And I'm getting the feeling they saw it for something else than it was too. Good. Cause I love anime, and it did originally look kind of cool tome. But hey, I'm the guy that had to see Tangled just for the horse. The horse was the coolest one in the previews. And frankly, the nest one in the movie as well.