Runtime: 1 hour, 37 minutes
Rating: PG
Director: Peter A. Ramsey
Quick Impressions:
My family has been excited about Rise of the Guardians all year—because the movie theater keeps telling us that we had better be.
We had a full house for Thanksgiving, and the day afterward most of the out-of-town guests were still here, so we took up the better part of a row at the theater. I didn’t get to ask everybody what they thought, but I did get feedback from my immediate family. All four of us had a different favorite character. My husband loved Sand Man. Our three-year-old girl loved the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman) and the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher. Our nine-year-old boy liked Santa Claus (Alec Baldwin) best. Personally, my favorite was Jack Frost (Chris Pine), (though I did find North the funniest, Tooth the prettiest, and Sand Man the most artistic).
The movie’s story is pretty simple, and the moral is one of the stock holiday fare, but that doesn’t make it less effective. Once again, my three-year-old watched the entire movie attentively and when interrogated, reported that she liked it better than Life of Pi, but not quite as much as Wreck-It Ralph. My stepson loved it. My husband loved it even more. I enjoyed it, but not as much as they did, though it certainly has a number of compelling strengths and is very watchable from start to finish. Now that I’ve seen it, I would guess it has a pretty good shot at an Oscar nomination, though I don’t think it will win. (Personally, I’d give the Oscar to ParaNorman, but so many animated films are deserving this year that I don’t see how the Academy can go wrong.)
The Good:
Visually, the movie is stunning! I feel like I’ve said that a lot this year, but maybe part of that comes from the fact that we’ve had such a quality crop of animated features in 2012, and animated films are usually very rich visually. I noticed Guillermo Del Toro’s name come up as an executive producer in the credits, but I don’t know if that means he had any sort of creative input on the film or not. I recently discovered that director Peter Ramsey began as an artist, though, and Rise of the Guardians looks like the work of an artist.
The movie is a treat visually. The realm of every Guardian is depicted with creative vision and thorough artistry. (Visually, I liked Easter land the best—particularly the giant stone eggs. Clever. Of course, if you’re talking about character interaction, you can’t beat the support staff at the North Pole who keep amusing us even as the credits roll.)
The characters themselves also have a distinctive look. (My daughter was suspicious of Santa’s tattoos. She seemed hung-up on the Naughty one and told me several times that she worried this might be “the Bad Santa tricking everybody or else why did he put that on his arm? It never comes off, so they might get suspicious of him when they see it.”)
I’ve never seen a more original (or more beautiful) version of the Tooth Fairy, and the menacing Aussie Bunny is certainly not the creature I pictured filling my Easter Basket when I was a child.
By far the most exceptional is Sand Man. Though he never speaks, he makes a tremendous impact and may be the best thing about the movie (in terms of sheer artistry). He’s like a cross between Charlie Chaplin and a firework (one of those shimmery gold ones that takes its time running down the night sky after it explodes).
Alexandre Desplat’s score is also quite nice. I thought the song that played during the credits, though (the one with the almost operatic sounding female vocalist) seemed like a strange fit for the movie. Obviously, I also like the work of child actor Dakota Goyo who voices Jamie because I thought, Jamie would be a good name for a little boy, just like I thought, Max would be a good name for a son when I watched Goyo play Hugh Jackman’s son Max in Real Steel.
Best Scene Visually:
All kinds of stuff catches your eye in this movie. (Dreamworks projects always feature superior animation.) But one of the strongest moments in the movie happens when North calls Jack into his office and makes his point using a nesting doll. I love nesting dolls, anyway, but I thought the scene worked so well because it used a visual example of an important idea also conveyed in words. (It’s interesting, too, that the idea Santa shares with Jack in this lesson is of central importance to the overall story.)
The scene is so effective because it conveys an important point by using apt words and images together. It’s a moment that’s simultaneously funny and profound.
I wish more scenes in the film had worked this way, with the stunning visuals revealing a core concept that was then emphasized with well-written dialogue.
Funniest Scene:
Though the North Pole characters are consistently the funniest in the movie, my favorite joke was the bit with the Tooth Fairy at the end. (That also drew a big laugh from my daughter.)
I also really loved the scene that played during the credits, and I heard lots of people around me laughing, too.
Best Action Sequence:
My daughter loved the final showdown against Pitch Black and laughed out loud at the last time Pitch appeared onscreen. (I didn’t actually think it was funny at all, but she seems to enjoy come-uppance scenes, probably because the bad guys in movies actually scare her.)
Personally, my favorite action sequence was the race to collect all the teeth. (I realize that “action sequence” more traditionally means “fighting,” and the tooth collecting bit is more of a comedic montage, but it was still fast-paced, so I think it counts.)
Best Scene:
Just as I was getting really annoyed with the movie (for a reason I’ll explain in a minute), the flashback I’d been waiting for the whole time finally happened. I love the scene from Jack’s past. In cinematic terms, it’s definitely nothing innovative, but for me, that’s part of what made it so good. It was a familiar type of scene in a film that could sometimes be disorienting.
I’m sure that the reason I like Jack’s character the best is that he’s the most dynamic. The story is really about him, and he’s pretty much the only one who gets significant character development. I’m a sucker for tragic backstories, anyway. I remember during the backstory part of Rachel Getting Married, consciously thinking to myself, This scene is so manipulative as I bawled my eyes out, anyway.
I liked Jack’s flashback and the way that it validated/defined the character. It wasn’t really anything unexpected (except maybe to Jack), but it was done well, and it helped the character complete his journey, making him even more likable.
(It’s also kind of funny to think that Chris Pine’s character is marooned in the ice discovering that he once had another life. If Leonard Nimoy showed up, it would be exactly like Star Trek.)
The Negatives:
When I asked my three-year-old what her favorite part of the movie was, she replied, “The fighting part.” I wanted to say, “Okay, but wasn’t that basically every part?”
Personally, I think the script could have been stronger. Granted, the screenplay was written by the Pulitzer Prize winning dramatist David Lindsay-Abaire, but he didn’t win the Pulitzer for Rise of the Guardians. From the film’s earliest scenes, I didn’t quite feel satisfied, but figuring out exactly what was bothering me took a while. By the time we finally learned Jack’s backstory, it dawned on me.
Even though Rise of the Guardians contains wonderful dramatic elements, these elements are not arranged and showcased as effectively as they could be. I liked almost everything the story had to say. I just didn’t like the way it said it. The story didn’t seem very focused to me. (And the Guardians definitely weren’t focused. It was like they all had ADD, and whatever they were doing at the moment totally pulled their focus and kept them too preoccupied to formulate any kind of greater plan. Of course, I guess that’s an occupational hazard when you remain focused on one holiday or one task for hundreds and hundreds of years.)
I will admit, though, that I prefer dialogue-heavy, character-driven movies with lots of talking and close-ups and emotions and ideas. Long action sequences often disorient and overwhelm me. And even though I like a beautiful image as much as anyone, I really prefer a story to be told with words (unless I know ahead of time that I’m going to a ballet or something). My stepson’s favorite movie this year is my least favorite, Battleship. From my point of view, nothing happens in Battleship. From his, nothing doesn’t happen.
Of course, Rise of the Guardians has a much stronger story than Battleship (and far fewer explosions). But I still don’t think it has enough exposition. The movie begins with a scene that seems ripped from a serious adult drama (like an actual stage play type drama), but as soon as we jump to the North Pole, things start moving and just don’t stop.
From my point of view, the movie jumped quickly from 1.) “Who am I? Will I ever know my destiny?” to 2.) “Okay guys, let’s do it!” without ever really explaining who the “guys” were or what they were actually doing. I mean, yes, most of us already know Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, et. al., but we don’t know them like this. Even the cast list calls the characters North, Tooth, Bunny—not the longer, traditional names.
To me, aspects of the movie are disorienting because (like Jack Frost) we know nothing about how being a Guardian works, and we discover the boundaries and the workings of the world as we move through it. In some ways, Jack Frost seems more like the anguished lead in a stage play, and the rest are more like characters in a video game (where it’s natural to move from themed land to themed land without explanation). In Rise of the Guardians, we don’t know the significance of anything until we’ve already encountered it or the danger of what may happen until it’s already started happening.
Now I’m not saying that I was confused really. It’s pretty straight forward. Good versus evil. We’ve all heard the story a million times—except for that surprising revelation about the significance of the baby teeth. (I was spatially disoriented a couple of times, though. Kind of a—“Wait a minute, where are they now? Are they in Russia? Are they inside a giant clock?”—thing, but maybe that’s because I was trying to wrangle my three-year-old. I think I somehow missed them saying, “Now we’re all going to where the Tooth Fairy lives because xyz.” They must have gone there for some reason, so this was probably something I missed because my daughter was wiggling, making it my fault, not the movie’s. I thought they were in the sleigh tracking Pitch, so I was surprised when suddenly all the Tooth Fairy stuff happened, but I think my daughter must have distracted me.)
Still I think a bit more exposition would have improved the movie. Why hurry? Slow down. Explain more about how Guardians work—and, more importantly, the place of those who are not human but are not Guardians (yet), either. Jack doesn’t seem to be the only immortal(ish) being who is not a Guardian at the beginning of the story because they all wait to see whom the Man in the Moon actually chooses to help them. So who are these others? And what is Pitch, exactly?
I also think the movie could have had more humor in the form of witty dialogue, or really, just stronger dialogue in general. Almost all of the best moments were visual, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but more compelling dialogue would only have added to the great work the visuals were already doing.
Now I realize these criticisms may not sound all that bad to many people—the movie was too exciting and fast-paced. That seems kind of silly, right?
But here’s the thing that bothers me the most—Pitch Black, the Boogie Man. Why is he rising up now? (Too bad for him he didn’t try all this a few of hundred years ago before What’s-His-Face and Whoozits went ice-skating.) Where did he come from? Why is he so obsessed with Jack? What does he want (really)? Was he once human, too? I’ll assume that he’s lying to Jack about his own motivations and feelings, but does he have feelings? Why does he deserve no pity? (We get a hint of an answer in what Jamie says to him at the end, but I just don’t think this is quite enough.) Jude Law does a magnificent job voicing him, but I think the villain is extremely underdeveloped.
And then there’s the matter of the hero. Gosh, he’s easy to trap, isn’t he? All you have to do is call his name. I thought that whole section of the movie didn’t make much sense, particularly the stuff about the staff. I’m attempting a spoiler-free review, so I can’t explain exactly what I mean. If I were Jack, though, I would have been more susceptible to the seductions of Pitch because the Guardians didn’t exactly go out of their way to convince him (or me) that they cared about him or that he had any sort of value beyond their immediate (and inconvenient) need for his powers.
It’s also annoying that they let him go (with only a few feeble protests) and later blame him for going. That sequence of Jack leaving, getting sidetracked, and eventually returning was the weakest part of the movie—not in what it accomplished. I loved the flashback, and obviously he needed to see that. I just thought the way he got to that point felt awkward and heavy-handed. (And why didn’t that little girl light up? She had just been with them, interacting with them, even more so than Jamie!)
I was also a little bit confused about the character of Cupcake. There are all these average, indistinguishable-from-other-movies neighborhood children coming around, and then there’s Cupcake. Her character felt superfluous and was clearly named Cupcake because we don’t call children by mean nicknames anymore. Why did they introduce someone so conspicuous? They didn’t really need her.
Overall:
Despite all my rambling complaints, I did enjoy Rise of the Guardians. Both children really liked it, and my husband loved it. For children, it’s a very satisfying adventure about the importance of belief (in oneself and in general) and belonging. It wasn’t the best animated movie I’ve seen this year, but 2012 has been an exceptionally strong year for animation. It features tons of action, stunning visuals, solid voice acting, and a few genuinely funny moments, so it’s definitely something that everyone in the family can enjoy.