Rise of the Guardians

Rise of the Guardians - Dir. Peter Ramsay (2012)

Rise of the Guardians is the Avengers of holiday icons. Based on a series of novels by William Joyce, the film sees Santa Claus (Alec Baldwin), the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), and the silent Sandman join forces as protectors of children all over the world. They are needed once more with the return of their nemesis, Pitch Black (Jude Law), colloquially known as the Bogeyman. Pitch has become more powerful than ever after gaining the ability to turn dreams into nightmares.

To defeat Pitch, the Guardians must recruit a new member into the fold, Jack Frost (Chris Pine), a free-spirited prankster whose interests lie solely in snowball fights than crusading for the forces of good. The Guardians derive their powers from the belief of children and they weaken when that belief unravels. Almost nobody believes in Jack, thus making him a disembodied spirit to the world.

Dreamworks Animation has really stepped up their game in the last couple years to close in on the gap between them and Pixar. Part of their efforts includes hiring Guillermo Del Toro as executive producer and Roger Deakins as a visual consultant. The animation is a colorful feast for the eyes although the 3D effects don't amount to much aside from snowflakes floating out of frame. First-time director Peter Ramsey crafts several thrilling action sequences beginning with a wild sled ride through the streets and a raucous scene in which the Guardians assist Tooth in collecting teeth. Sandman and Pitch inventively use sand particles to create various objects, a power akin to Green Lantern.

The script by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (Rabbit Hole) is rather formulaic with Jack's character arc following the basic hero's journey. The film tries hard to rekindle those dying embers of childhood wonder before kids were glued to iPhones and Playstations. However, discovering Santa wasn't real always seemed like a rite of passage, a first step into adulthood, instead of a traumatic experience. Plus, the Sandman and the Tooth Fairy have usually been placed on the low end of the pantheon. Are there kids still desperately clinging to the idea that a giant rabbit hands out eggs every Easter? Had they been as cool as they are depicted in Guardians, children would be ready to believe.

Joyce has creatively re-imagined familiar characters in unfamiliar ways. Santa is now a boisterous Russian Cossack with 'Naughty' and 'Nice' tattooed on his forearms. He has an army of Yetis building the toys in his workshop while lame-brained elves scurry about ala the Minions in Despicable Me. The Easter Bunny is now E. Aster Bunnymund, a rough and tumble Aussie voiced by a pitch perfect Hugh Jackman. Despite wielding a pair of boomerangs, he still has the skittish side of a fluffy rabbit. Tooth is a hyper energetic hummingbird-type fairy with an armada of cute little fairies to do her bidding.

Rise of the Guardians won't go down as a classic, but it's handsomely animated and set to a beautiful score by Alexandre Desplat.

Rating: *** (*****)

Rango

Rango - Dir. Gore Verbinski (2011)

Imagine if Hunter S. Thompson and Sergio Leone dropped acid together and had a baby. That mutant freak baby would probably be Rango. Throw in healthy doses of Salvador Dali and Tex Avery and you have an animated film that stands apart from the homogenized CG kids movies flooding multiplexes across the country.

Johnny Depp has been praised for his chameleon-like qualities as an actor so it comes as no surprise when he's called upon to play an actual chameleon. As the titular Rango, he is a pet lizard (with a flair for the theatrical) living inside a glass aquarium struggling to define his own identity. When we meet Rango, he is performing Shakespeare with his only friends a dead fly, a plastic wind-up fish named Mr. Timms, and the naked torso of a Barbie doll. Oh, the movie hasn't even begun to get weird yet.

A car accident sends the aquarium tumbling out of the car where it's smashed into a million pieces across the asphalt road. Rango finds himself lost in the middle of the desert and the first creature he comes across is a Don Quixote-esque armadillo named Roadkill (Alfred Molina). He is so named because he was clearly run over by a car, yet somehow survived. Practically bisected, the poor armadillo still has the tire marks across his flattened stomach. Nope, the movie gets weirder still.

Rango wanders through the scorching desert and finds a dusty Old West town appropriately named Dirt. Through sheer dumb luck, he kills a predatory hawk plaguing the town and re-imagines himself (like any good chameleon) as a deadly gunfighter and becomes the sheriff of Dirt. Rango also romances Beans (Isla Fisher), a desert iguana prone to random spells of catatonia. Her farmland is sought after by the seemingly benevolent Mayor of Dirt, a wheelchair bound desert tortoise voiced by Ned Beatty. It shouldn't be much of a spoiler that the Mayor will be revealed as primary antagonist since Beatty also portrayed the similar Lotso Hugging Bear in Toy Story 3. There's also an owl mariachi band who act as a Greek chorus narrating the journey of Rango.

Rango was produced by Nickelodeon Movies and is the first film fully animated by Industrial Light & Magic with Roger Deakins serving as visual consultant (as he did on Wall-E and How to Train Your Dragon). The animation is impeccable including a gorgeous shot of infinite reflections of the characters inside a giant eyeball. The performances were uniquely captured as well with director Gore Verbinski, working from a script by John Logan (Gladiator, The Last Samurai), using a process he dubbed 'emotion capture.' This is a decidedly low-tech method with the actors performing the scenes on a soundstage. The voices were recorded there and the video tapes were viewed by the animators to properly render movement and facial expressions.

While the majority of animated films tend to look the same, Rango dares to be original. There's no attempt to make the creatures cute and cuddly so the studio can sell them as Happy Meal toys. Even generally adorable animals like rabbits are rendered as mangy oddballs. One character has an arrow going through his eyeball and out the side of his head. Rango himself is hardly the lovable little chameleon from Tangled, his Hawaiian shirt and smashed, lopsided head is meant to evoke the artwork of Ralph Steadman, the long-time collaborator of the late-Hunter S. Thompson.

The subversive humor of Rango is another element that makes the film so successful. The movie is filled with pop culture references which will likely go over the heads of the children in the audience as well as some of the parents accompanying them. Rango makes several references to Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas such as the visual callbacks to Steadman and a cameo from two humans resembling Thompson and Dr. Gonzo. The primary plot point of the movie (involving a water shortage) is lifted straight out of Chinatown while much of the imagery is borrowed from iconic Westerns like High Noon, The Wild Bunch, and A Fistful of Dollars while the score by Hans Zimmer is cribbed from the work of Ennio Morricone. Rango's eventually nemesis, Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy), has a Gatling gun for a tail and a flat-brimmed hat borrowed from Lee Van Cleef. Rango also goes on a vision quest where he meets the Spirit of the West (Timothy Olyphant) and I won't spoil who he's clearly modeled after.

One spectacular action sequence finds the protagonists riding a wagon and being chased by a clan of rodents riding bats ("We can't stop here. This is bat country!"). Somehow the filmmakers weave together references to Apocalypse Now, The Road Warrior, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Star Wars (it is an ILM production). However, none of the references are thrown in simply to show off how clever and hip everyone is. Neither are they Family Guy gags where they pop up randomly and have nothing to do with the plot. The references don't draw attention to themselves so children won't be scratching their heads while those in the know will get an additional layer of joy. The voice acting doesn't draw attention to itself either as the filmmakers chose the best actors, instead of stunt casting A-list talent. This leads to the casting of great character actors like Ray Winstone, Stephen Root, and Harry Dean Stanton.

Rango earned a PG rating and contains some decidedly adult humor. One of the townsfolk mentions how he found a human spinal column in his feces. So parents should be warned in case their child asks them questions about prostate exams.

The year may have barely begun, but Rango is already the frontrunner for Best Animated Film of 2011. With Pixar releasing the anemic looking sequel, Cars 2, it is hard imagine another picture knocking Rango off the pedestal. The fact that a movie so strange and trippy was made in the Hollywood system is astounding. Most likely it exists solely because of Verbinski and Depp's success on the Pirates of the Caribbean series. The story may be familiar, but the film is a unique and witty take on the classic hero's journey.

Rating: ***½ (*****)