Rise of the Guardians (2012)

The St. Patty’s day leprechaun would have definitely made this a different type of movie.

The movie centers on a group of heroes with extraordinary abilities, thatmust join forces for the first time to protect the hopes, beliefs and imagination of the children all over the world against the evil ideas of the Boogeyman (Jude Law). The heroes up against these terrible ideas just so happen to be Santa Claus (Alec Baldwin), the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), the Sandman, the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher) and Jack Frost (Chris Pine).

Other than the Avengers and Justice League, there aren’t many other groups of heroes/characters that are worth being brought to the big-screen to team-up. I mean, yeah, maybe there is but no team really comes as quick to my mind as much as every child’s favorite pieces of fairy-tale story-telling: holiday heroes. Yes, even though you may not believe in Santa, the Easter Bunny, or that spooky piece-of-shit that lives underneath your bed, kids still do and will not find it hard to believe that these same characters, can bring on a can of whoop-ass every once and awhile if they wanted to. Yeah, that’s the type of movie we’re dealing with here: holiday characters, beating the shit out of things. Get ready for some questions that need to be answered, mom and dad!

I wasn’t really looking forward to this film from the get-go mainly because the trailer seemed to take itself way, way too seriously. I mean think of it, you have Santa, Easter Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and Jack Frost all piled into one movie and you’re going to show me how they band together to fight evil? I don’t think so and better yet, where’s all of the fun in dreaming of about one of these days watching all of your favorite childhood, holiday characters come onto the screen and hang-out with one another? There should be some fun and judging by the trailer, it seemed like the fun was a tad too serious for my taste. Thankfully, I was wrong, dead-wrong to be exact.

There’s actually a lot of fun to be had in this story, mainly because the plot shows all of our favorite characters as what they are, gives them each personalities, specific traits that make them so special in the first-place, and how they are all going to band together and fight this bad evil that seems to be taking over the world and the little kiddies that inhabit it. It’s fun to see Santa and the Easter Bunny just mess around with one another, but it’s even better to watch how they use their respective skills of climbing down chimneys and throwing eggs to help each other out and work as a team. I loved seeing that, and I can assure you that kids will too because it’s something you don’t get to see everyday until you fall asleep and can only dream of it. Yes, anybody over the age of 12 can still dream of Santa and the Easter Bunny, so bug off!

And as you would expect, the visuals and animation is just beautiful. Since I didn’t see this in a free screening, you know I sure as hell didn’t see this one in 3D but if I did, I would have probably loved it because this is so beautiful-looking. It’s crazy to see two movies come out in the same weekend where both are filled with beautiful-visuals, yet, are used so differently. Life of Pi uses it to enhance the story and make you feel as if what you are seeing is all real without any preservatives added, whereas this movie, doesn’t use it to show you that everything is real, but to place you in a small, animated world where everything is colorful, wild, and most of all, beautiful to look at. Both films are beautiful, but they are both beautiful in their own, different ways which definitely has me wondering whether or not 3D film making is ever going to go away.

However, like Life of Pi, this movie sort of runs into a problem with it’s story that seems a bit manipulative and not utilized very well. It’s a fun movie, no doubt about it, but when you have all of these characters come together, you feel like there should be more inventiveness and originality used to where you feel like that’s something you could have never done, had you been given a pad, a pen, and a plot-line to write-on about. It’s a bit obvious with where it goes and doesn’t really make sense as to why it does go there. It just does. Maybe that also has to do with the fact that the times that this movie does try to be funny, it doesn’t really gel very well and even though they weren’t really going for the hilarity-angle of the final-product, I still feel like some of the times they tried were way too obvious and painful to not mention. Also, those elves were so obviously a rip-off of the freakin’ Minions from Despicable Me, almost to the point of where they just hit each other the same way. Way, way too obvious but hey, it will most likely get the kids laughing.

Where I think this movie really lost me was how I thought about it afterward, and barely remembered a thing from it at all. Yes, I enjoyed my time when I watched the movie and yes, it was a great animation-flick, but nothing as memorable as it should have been. Maybe it was because I did the “double-movie day” that I usually do every once and awhile and this was the first of the two and that’s why I didn’t remember much, or maybe the fact that I saw Red Dawn after this and my mind went and good mood went elsewhere, but writing this review about 3 days later, reminds me of just how little I actually remembered. It’s enjoyable, no doubt about it, but once it’s all said and done, then it’s gone from your mind without anything to really stick their forever.

Even though the overall-product wasn’t great, the voice-casting actually was. Casting Alec Baldwin as Santa and have him voice a Russian-accent seemed very, very strange at-first, but actually worked quite well for Baldwin and the character, and gave Santa a persona that was larger-than-life in a way. It’s also better because I didn’t think it was Alec Baldwin voicing Santa, I actually thought it was Santa, right there in front of me, on-screen. He does exist! I knew it! Chris Pine is pretty solid as Jack Frost but the voice did seem a little too heavy and hoarse for a character that looks like a little boy that doesn’t have any muscles and instead, has super-powers. Still deciding on which one’s better. Hugh Jackman seems to be having a ball as the Easter Bunny and always seems like he wants to fight somebody, no matter what the situation is. Maybe that’s how Hugh Jackman is in real-life? And if so, that would be really bad-ass of the guy. Isla Fisher is fine as the Tooth Fairy but not really funny or exciting to watch, she’s just there. And last, but certainly not least is Jude Law as the Boogeyman who has a vicious, if creepy sound to his voice that works for the character, even if the guy is a bit annoying with how much he hammers on the idea of him being a bad-guy, doing bad things, and always tricking people. I get it! The Boogeyman is bad! I knew that since I was 5, and I know it now!

Consensus: It may not be the ultimate team-up movie you’d expect in a year where The Avengers have reigned supreme, but Rise of the Guardians is still the same type of fun, excitement, and good-feelings parents and their kids want, especially around the holidays.

7/10=Rental!!