Rise of the Guardians

Rise of the Guardians would make a fine family double-feature with Life of Pi if you were keen on your kids being spooned giant heaps of anti-rationalist bullshit: it doesn’t matter what’s real, what’s true, or what makes sense, what matters is what you believe, or better yet, what you prefer. Pi, at least, has a coherent (if somewhat odious) philosophy; Guardians, a drab, video-gamey CG adventure in which Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman, the Easter Bunny, and a weird manchild version of Jack Frost battle for the souls of kids seized by an epidemic of reasonableness, is just making shit up.

For some reason the film is obsessed with the notion of whether the children of the world continue to believe in Santa, the Tooth Fairy, etc. (all of whom clearly exist, so who cares?), or whether they let “wonder” get replaced with “fear” of a nightmare-dwelling baddie named Pitch Black. It’s a dumb, blandly sloganeering love letter to blind faith and willful denial, refusing to acknowledge that fear is a healthy part of growing up, or that facing up to real-life challenges isn’t simply a matter of stamping one’s feet and insisting that one (a) doesn’t believe in them; or (b) isn’t afraid of them. Cloying celebrity voices and hyperactive, whiz-bang action will keep the youngest kids engaged, but in the age of Pixar and Wreck-It Ralph, do we really need movies like this?

-- Eugene Novikov

Released:	2012
Genres:	Adventure, Animation, Family, Comedy, Action, Fantasy
Starring:	Dakota Goyo, Isla Fisher, Chris Pine, Hugh Jackman, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law
Directed by:	Peter Ramsey
Screenwriters:	David Lindsay-Abaire
Rated:	PG