Dreamworks has produced two films that make me wish Disney would buy the company just so their amazing fantasy worlds could take form in the parks. The first was the outstanding
How to Train Your Dragon. The second, just released, is
Rise of the Guardians.
Directed by Peter Ramsey and based on a series of children's novels by William Joyce, the film offers a daring and playful twist on holiday legends. It also continues a welcome trend started by
Dragon: another Dreamworks film mercifully free of pop culture jokes and bathroom humor.
The plot in a nutshell: Pitch Black (the Boogeyman) is tired of being ignored while childhood's assigned guardians North (Santa), Bunnymund (Easter Bunny), Tooth (Tooth Fairy) and Sandy (the Sandman) get all the love and attention. Having discovered how to corrupt Sandman's creations into nightmare creatures, Pitch sets out to destroy the Guardians by sabotaging their hard work. If children stop believing, the Guardians lose all their magic and the ability to interact with the human world. The threat is so severe that the Man in the Moon (never seen, but a respected sage to all the legendary characters) selects -- for the first time in centuries -- a new candidate to join the ranks of the Guardians: Jack Frost. But the freewheeling, responsibility-shirking Frost doesn't want to join.
It plays out like a cross between
The Avengers and every Rankin/Bass holiday special you ever watched as a child -- and that's exactly why I love this movie. I always enjoy seeing different interpretations of holiday legends, and this one's a lulu.
Disney, of course, has a legacy of creating interesting takes on holiday settings, from the Silly Symphony
Santa's Workshop to the Tim Allen
Santa Clause trilogy to the terrific
Prep & Landing specials. This Dreamworks extravaganza presents an entirely new universe where the Easter Bunny is a six-foot tall boomerang-hurling Australian and the Tooth Fairy commands an army of hummingbird-like fairies to do her "field work."
