RISE OF THE GUARDIANS (Two and a Half Stars)

U.S.: Terry Ramsey, 2012

Movies just get curiouser and curiouser, as Alice might say, after striking another exclusive deal with The March Hare and Tim Burton.

In the new DreamWorks animated lollapalooza, Rise of the Guardians (one of the more peculiar new super-hero action movies), the rock-‘em-sock’em team The Guardians — the heroic defenders of childhood myths originally assembled for the “Guardians of Children” book series by author William Joyce and consisting of Jack Frost, Sandy (short for the Sandman), Tooth (short for Tooth Fairy), Bunny (short for the Easter Bunny), and Santa Claus (who has a Russian accent and calls himself “North”) — band together to fight against the nefarious Pitch (short, I guess, for Pitch Black). Pitch is a Boogey Man, a sort of WalMart version of Voldemort, who commands a herd of galloping nightmares, and aims to bring back bad dreams to all the world’s children. (Why doesn’t he just buy a movie studio?)

The star of the group, the part originally slotted for Leonardo DiCaprio, is Jack Frost (voiced by Chris Pine after DiCaprio “ankled“). He‘s an energetic but somewhat neurotic kid, who’s upset that children can’t see him and that he doesn’t have his own special Jack Frost Day, and he also suffers from the after-effects of a traumatic incident that took place some centuries past in The Land of Flashback. The rest of the childhood fantasy crew try to enlist Jack and supply support and therapy. And funny voices.

Pitch is voiced, or sneered, by Jude Law, and the Guardians are played (quite well) by Pine, by Alec Baldwin (as North, who seems to be prepping for old Akim Tamiroff or Oscar Homolka roles), Hugh Jackman (who adds Easter Bunnies to Wolverines in his gallery of super-hero animals), Isla Fisher as the toothsome Tooth, and the late Marcel Marceau, who is said to have dubbed the wordless role of the Sandman. (Just kidding) There are some human kids too, frolicking merrily in the snow, with whom Jack tries to bond (the kids, not the snow), led by cute little animated frolicker Jamie Bennett (voiced by Dakota Goyo).

All in all, they’re a pretty colorful bunch, but for the first half or so of the movie, despite a rousing Alexandre Desplat score behind them, the movie tended (except for Baldwin) to bore me stiff. It failed to connect with me, or I failed to connect with them, or I was waiting for Martin Short or Michael Keaton to show up, or something. Perhaps it’s a matter of temperament. Rise of the Guardians, directed by Peter Ramsey (in his theatrical feature debut), boasts really beautiful visualization. But, for a while, the show was just too frenetic and violent, especially for the kind of gentle, empathetic feelings and ideas for which screenwriter David Lindsay-Abaire (Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of Rabbit Hole), is aiming.

I realize that many contemporary cartoon features are somewhat hyper-active, and the capturing the hyper-active audience is crucial to modern demographic thinking and various marketing plans. But, good and occasionally dazzling as the technique and visuals are here, I still prefer animated films that let you see and savor the animation, like most of Pixar and classic Disney — not that those films don‘t have their hyper-active moments too.

There‘s actually a lot to savor here, including glacially pretty near North Pole backgrounds , adorable little tooth-things and Easter Egg battalions, and lots of swooping aerial shots, full of swooping aerial sights and sounds, including, by Santa‘s beard, a sleigh with reindeer. But the movie seems too intent for too longish a while on blasting us out of our seats, in a manner better suited to Die Hard Naughty or Nice or Spider-Man Vs. Santa Clause. It needed to linger, linger, a bit more…something Ramsey might consider next time out.

I finally settled in to Rise of the Guardians, and enjoyed part of the last part,

SPOLIER ALERT

though I don’t believe in Santa Clause, or 3D…

END OF SPOILER

…and I saw it at home, with a screener, and without 3D glasses. which means, I guess, that kids — particularly hyper-active kids — will disagree with me and have themselves a ball, in theatres if not on DVD. By the way, just to allay possible confusion, the late Marcel Marceau had nothing to do with this movie, nor does he endorse any of the philosophies espoused in it, with a Russian accent, by Alec Baldwin. Nor does he believe in Alec Baldwin, though he did believe in Santa Claus at one time, or in Pere Noel, or at least in their elves. All of whom have 3D glasses.

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