Contains spoilers
I am a lover to animation, having loved it all of my life. So like many people I was chomping at the bit to go and see Dreamwork's "Rise of the Guardians".
I give "Rise" a 7.8/10
Compared to the likes of "ParaNorman", "Wreck-It Ralph", and "Hotel Transylvania" I feel that it fell into last place along with "Hotel". While the animation and character/landscape design far surpassed all the other movies, but I feel that some moments in the movie were lacking. One key point in the lacking was the way that the Guardians treated Pitch at the end of the film. He was defeated and then tormented by the Nightmares he had created. I feel that if the Guardians had treated him with more grace as the prelude comic by rufftoon (one of the creators of the movie
rufftoon.tumblr.com/) had treated Pitch with. I felt (In my 'infinite wisdom') that if the writers had added some extra dimension to Pitch, like have him apologize for his need of believers, and have the Guardians help him tone down his fear inducing that everything would have left a better taste in my mouth.
Another thing that I felt lacked compared to the like of "Ralph" and "Hotel" was the inevitable split in the movie. Everyone has one, where its where the two individuals in a romance, who worked so hard for their relationship, have a revelation and start hating each other again. I hate these splits (I do not know the movie terminology for it) so much that I fear going to movies because of it. In "Rise" Jack Frost has no memory of who he was before he became a spiritual entity, but luckily the teeth the Tooth Fairy collects contains all of the memories children have. So Frost agrees to help the Guardians in return of his teeth. Blah, blah, blah Frost is late to protecting the Easter Bunny's eggs since he confronted Pitch (who had stolen the teeth and all of Tooth's mini-minions) and Easter was lost. Insert angry monologue and Frost leaves. It's so predictable (maybe not the finer points, but you know what I mean) that I was dreading this sequence.
In "Hotel", John created the split because he feared Mavis' safety if she stayed with him. In "Ralph" (one of the best splits I've seen) Ralph destroys Vanellope's go-kart under the pretense that if she wins she could cause the game to be unplugged (because of her glitch) but while all other sprites could make it to game station she would be forced to die with the game because she cannot leave. They tried to make the split in "Rise" memorable because of the budding friendship between Bunny and Frost, and to explain the inner significance with what Easter stands for, but it felt lacking compared to the aforementioned movies.
But that aside, there are some other aspects that this movie had in spades. I mentioned earlier the designs were amazing, and they are. The North Pole, Tooth Palace, and Easter Island (I'm guessing on this one) were memorable. You could see that they were painstakingly created and there was much thought poured into each scene. But while we only saw some of the stages for no more than a couple minutes we were left with the impression of how each stage embodied the character who called it home.
Beyond that was the interaction between characters. The best example of this was the hunt for teeth. With Tooth's mini-minions gone there is no one to collect teeth, thus the missing teeth bred in children the seeds of doubt which in turn kills a Guardian from the inside out. To rectify this, the Guardians decide to go out into the world and get the teeth. In this sequence we see that the Guardians are more childish then naught. They bound through Moscow racing, pranking one another, out doing their rivals by leaving their respected gifts in place of quarters, and ultimately collecting all the teeth. In one instance which brings a smile to my face, the Bunny creeps into a room for a tooth and to leave Easter eggs only to find a giggling North just plugging in a FULLY LIT AND FULL SIZED CHRISTMAS TREE right next to the child's bed. Needless to say I laughed out loud.
Strangely enough, you also start to sympathize with Pitch (who's name i dislike for the fact that when small child wish to recite it it is awfully close to the word 'bitch'). He just wants to be believed in again just like North, Bunny, Tooth, and Sandman. His measures are a little extreme, but centuries of neglect and hatred would do that to a man. He was once the greatest spiritual entity, then he was nothing. I feel for the guy and that is why I disliked his end so much.
Overall I recommend this movie to those who wish to see it, and to those who are on the fence I would say "if you have time and your bored go see it. You get a kick out of it."
