Rise of the Guardians Review

I’m told that Dreamworks isn’t doing so well financially. Several of their more recent movies (apart from Home) did poorly in the box office. I’m not sure why. The recent ones I’ve seen were pretty good. Adding to that list is Rise of the Guardians (2012). Featuring a mash-up of modern children’s folk tale heroes, it’s been compared to The Avengers for kids. I think that’s selling Rise of the Guardians a bit short; it is truly a fun movie!

Generation after generation, immortal Guardians like Santa Claus (Alec Baldwin), the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), the Sandman, and the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher) protect the world's children from darkness and despair. However, an evil boogeyman named Pitch Black (Jude Law) schemes to overthrow the Guardians by obliterating children's belief in them. It falls to a winter sprite named Jack Frost (Chris Pine) to thwart Pitch's plans and save the Guardians from destruction.

I can see why people would think to compare Rise of the Guardians with The Avengers. Both have completely mismatched sets of heroes uniting and gathering together to fight a mutual powerful enemy. Both have lots of fun action and high stakes for their respective world settings. But saying that Guardians is for kids is selling it short. Guardians has a delightful whimsy and charm to it that I’m sure would delight anyone of any age.

I loved the characters in this movie. As a general rule, any movie that features Santa Claus will inevitably be awful. That wasn’t the case in Guardians. The Santa here is not your traditional Santa; he’s got a Russian accent and has a prominent Russian cultural personality. He has tattooed arms that say “Naughty” on one and “Nice” on the other, and he fights with two swords. But he’s still a fanciful and lovable character; he’s just fun! The Easter Bunny is voiced by Hugh Jackman who apparently loved the role because he could use his natural Australian accent. The Easter Bunny is another fun tough guy who wields boomerangs. Everyone in the movie is likable and interesting in his or her own right.

The story moves logically and practically. The setting is a little bit on the complex side, but everything is explained gradually and shown to viewers as the story evolves, sometimes even during action scenes. There are rules specific to the settings that need to be established so that they can be adhered to or even broken to make a suitably compelling story. Everything is well written and shown to us so that we understand enough to get us to the next scene where the stakes are even higher. Yet the story is simple enough that even young audiences can keep up with it.

The animation is stellar here. The characters are unique and have very interesting designs. Their powers are really neat to behold as they conjure up portals around the world and paint windows and leaves with icy frost. One of the more visually interesting characters is the Sandman; he’s basically mute, but has small images made of glowing golden sand appear above his head to illustrate what he’s trying to communicate. Coupled with his expressive facial features you can still tell what this silent character is thinking, which is a marker of superior animation.

Guardians, as stated above, was a box office bomb. It was released on November 21, 2012 and received mixed to positive reviews, but was a financial disappointment, contributing to a studio writedown of $83 million for the quarter and the layoffs of 350 employees. Rise of the Guardians was the last DreamWorks Animation film distributed by Paramount, as DreamWorks has signed a five-year distribution deal with 20th Century Fox, which started in 2013 with The Croods. With that kind of a financial failure, I’m not surprised Paramount didn’t want to renew a distribution contract with Dreamworks. Guardians may not have been the event that destroyed the deal with Paramount, but it probably contributed to it.

I have to admit that the idea of a group of holiday mascots and children’s urban legends teaming up to fight the Boogieman certainly sounds rather outlandish, childish, and probably not something that anyone over the age of eight would enjoy very much. But Rise of the Guardians is a good, solid animated feature. I genuinely liked it. It was complex and humorous enough to be compelling to adults while also being simple and whimsical enough for children. I don’t think it’s fair to say it is like The Avengers for kids since this is a creative and engaging fantasy story that is sheer fun to get lost in. It was a box office bomb, but I really don’t understand why. I liked this movie enough to want to get a copy of on Blu-Ray eventually. Rise of the Guardians makes a fun family movie night, and it’s still fun even if you don’t have kids to watch it with.

Did you have a particular holiday mascot or urban legend that you were fond of as a kid? Comment below and tell me why!

Now You See Me Movie Review

Ocean's Eleven set a pretty high standard for heist movies where the scoundrel robbers manage to stay just a couple of steps ahead of everyone who is pursuing them. Now You See Me (2013) doesn't exceed Ocean's Eleven by any means, but it blends a heist movie with the idea of magic, which leaves us with a pretty creative and interesting movie.

Four street magicians, Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Reeves (Isla Fisher), and Wilder (Dave Franco) each answer a mysterious summons to an obscure address with secrets inside. A year later they are The Four Horsemen, big time stage illusionists who climax their sold out Las Vegas show by apparently robbing a bank on stage. This puts agents Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) of the FBI and Alma Vargas (Mélanie Laurent) of Interpol on the case to find out how they did it. The mystery proves difficult to solve even with the insights of the professional illusion exposer, Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman). What follows is a bizarre investigation where nothing is what it seems with illusions, dark secrets, and hidden agendas galore as all involved are reminded of the great truth in the puzzle: the closer you look, the less you see.

In the opening scene we see each of the magicians showing off their skills and it really draws the audience in quickly. Atlas is doing a card trick on the streets and asks a young lady to pick any card from a deck while he flips through them himself. For the heck of it I picked a card I saw as the deck passed by the screen. The trick is finished by the selected card's suit and rank appearing in lights on the side of a large building. Interestingly enough, it was the card I picked out as well. That instantly made me think that professional stage magicians were consulted in the making of this movie, and that it wouldn't need a lot of CGI effects to impress the audience. Yes, there was some CGI used, but most of it was used in complex camera work, less so for the "magic tricks."

There is a great cast in Now You See Me. Woody Harrelson is great in most everything he's in. Jesse Eisenberg is a fast talking arrogant dweeb as usual, but he plays that sort of role well. The actors who play The Four Horsemen have distinctive differences in how they act when the characters are on and off stage, which is impressive. You can tell when the character is performing and when they are not, an indicator of good acting. I haven't seen Mark Ruffalo since The Avengers, he's a great Bruce Banner and he's a great FBI agent who is at his wits' end chasing stage performers who seem to possess actual magic abilities. We've even got Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman topping off the ensemble; even when they appear in subpar movies, their mere presence improves the overall quality of the film.

The script is not perfect by any means, but it remains engaging and fun. The dialogue was witty and flowed well. It seemed to think it was a bit deeper than it actually was. Rhodes keeps insisting that magic can't be real, but finds fewer and fewer reasons to believe that it is not. Alma also thinks that everything the Four Horsemen are doing is simply an illusion, but makes statements about how good it is to believe in something. That's nice, but I never really saw where they were trying to go with that idea. While most of the script is pretty good, the ending seems very out of sorts. It's as if the script writer finished writing the climax and kind of threw some random stuff in at the end because there needed to be a conclusion of some kind. You simply don't see the end coming at all. On the one hand, it sort of fits thematically; we're constantly told a magician distracts the audience from what's really happening. But there was next to nothing that even hints at what was "really happening" in the movie and from a film making standpoint, that made the ending seem unjustified, incongruous, and sloppy.

Now You See Me was a clever concept that was really fun to watch. It wasn't great; the script has some flaws, there's a baseless love interest, it doesn't resolve all of the questions it raises, and the ending comes out of nowhere. In spite of that, it has excellent cast, some outstanding visuals that don't rely heavily on CGI, and it coyly plays with the movie viewers. Some of the magic was debunked, but we never know for sure how much of the tricks were illusions or if it was actual magic. It evens out into what a summer movie should be: fun. While it is a fun movie, I'd wait for it on Blu-Ray; it's worth seeing, but not on the big screen. I also recommend seeing it twice. It's the kind of movie that's probably a bit more interesting when you know the end from the beginning.

Here's the trailer for Now You See Me:

What is your favorite heist movie? Comment Below and tell me why!