Review of Rise of the Guardians (2012) by Tim W — 14 Aug 2013

A throughly enjoyable animation from start to finish. Right from the first frame where the audience is introduced to Jack Frost and he's monologuing you instantly take a liking to him. His words combined with the beyond beautiful cinematography is truly captivating.

Another instantly likeable character is Sandman, though he may not have any spoken lines of dialogue at all, his facial expressions speak his mind perfectly as well as adding humour to tense scenes. Speaking of tense, Jude Law's voice acting for the villain Pitch is excellent. His vocal performance gives quite a dark and menacing feel to the character, giving the audience a true sense of danger in some sequences throughout.

A film in this modern cinema age usually lasts for at least two hours, so in that respect this movie only being roughly an hour and a half is an achievement in itself being able to maintain the majority of quality while sacrificing quantity.

In saying in the minor issue for me was the lack of character development in some sections. (Warning: Spoiler Alert) When Sandman is consumed by the bad dreams created by Pitch and the audience is lead to believe he's dead it has emotional depth and it's very well shot. However in saying that the remaining Guardians only mourn him for a short period and then continue with the main task at hand in the short space of about fifteen minutes.

On the other hand, the artwork throughout this movie is exquisite, especially any scenes that are shot in the North Pole or in any winter environments for that matter.

Overall I'd highly recommend this movie purely for it's amazing voice acting line up, fascinating artwork and it's unique take on combining holiday characters and making a story out of it.