ANI-MOVIES, *Rise Of The Guardians

Having no relation to Legend Of The Guardians which came out just two years before this, Rise Of The Guardians was a film adaptation of The Guardians Of Childhood book series by William Joyce. It's basically an imaginary characters version of the Avengers with Santa Claus, Easter Bunny, Sandman, and the Tooth Fairy protecting the children of the world from evil.

We open up with the creation of Jack Frost rising from a frozen pond, learning he can fly and control ice, but that no one can see or hear him. Cut to three centuries later, Jack is brought to the North Pole by Santa's yeti goon squad to be inducted into the team of the Guardians, individuals chosen by the mysterious Man in the Moon to defend kids from the newly arisen Pitch Black(aka: The Boogeyman). Pitch learns how to manipulate the Sandman's power to create dark horses called Nightmares to torment children's dreams, while at the same time attacking the Tooth Fairy's domain and stealing all the collected children's teeth which contain their earliest memories. Jack is tempted by Pitch who bribe's him with his old teeth to recover the memories of his past life, but ends up loosing to him in a fight after Pitch had sabotaged Easter(we had to give the Bunny some reason to be in this story aside from whining about how more popular Christmas is!). Jack recovers and brings the Guardians back together with the last few children on Earth who still believe they exist to have a final conflict with Pitch and rescue the world from darkness.

This was a fine addition to the Dreamworks catalog, although it was the last one so far that they did for Paramount. Background painter Peter Ramsey did a great job directing this as his first full-length animated feature. The voice acting is okay, although Alec Baldwin does a lousy Russian accent as Santa(you know, like in the storybooks!), and for some reason the Easter Bunny is an Aussie played by Hugh Jackman. It does feature some unique character designs, and above average CGI animation. For sure makes for a good watch for the kids at any given time of year, although to show it at X-Mas or Easter doesn't hurt either.