Film Review: "Rise of the Guardians" (2013).

"It is our job to protect the children of the world. For as long as they believe in us, we will guard them with our lives..." This sums up the premise of Rise of the Guardians. This 3D computer-animated fantasy-adventure film based on William Joyce's The Guardians of Childhood book series. Directed by Peter Ramsey and produced by DreamWorks Animation. The film tells a story about the Guardians (North or Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, Bunnymund or the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman), who enlist Jack Frost to stop Pitch from launching an assault on the world in darkness and protect the innocence of children all around the world.


 Although the film is based on the Joyce's book series, it contains differences from the books. The book series, begun in 2011, explains the origins of the characters, while the film takes place about 200 years after the books, and shows how the characters function in present time. Joyce explained, "Because I don't want people to read the book and then go see the movie and go, 'Oh, I like the book better,' and I also didn't want them to know what happens in the movie. And I also knew that during the progress of film production, a lot of things can change. So I wanted to have a sort of distance, so we were able to invoke the books and use them to help us figure out the world of the movie, but I didn't want them to be openly competitive to each other." The idea for the Guardians came from Joyce's daughter, who asked him "if he thought Santa Claus had ever met the Easter Bunny."

The film features the voices of Chris Pine as Jack Frost, Alec Baldwin as Santa Claus, Hugh Jackman as The Easter Bunny, Isla Fisher as The Tooth Fairy and Jude Law as Pitch. The performances in this film were all superb and deserve merits in their own ways. Pine's performance was superb in a kids film of this kind as he able to bring a care-free, devil-may-care attitude to the film. But as well as deep emotion and dark adult tone. Baldwin's performance was a surprising and impressive as he able to make himself unidentifiable and unrecognizable to me. He was able to master an accent perfectly for this role. Jackman's performance was enjoyable and humorous, and so in touch with his 'Aussie' side which made the character ever more memorable. Fisher's performance was a great one as she able to project beauty, kindness and warmth to the role. Lastly Law's performance was not only dark and moody (in a good way), but also menacing as the film's villain.

Like a superior, state-of-the-art model built from the imagination, DreamWorks’ buoyant, witty and robustly entertaining fantasy smash-up, Rise of the Guardians, is pure escapism for children and adults, boasting rich animation while it reserves humor that offset the potentially lumbering and unavoidably formulaic aspects of this two-hour team-origin story.

Simon says Rise of the Guardians receives: