Rise of the Guardians (2012)

  Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving and you didn't kill too many of your relatives.  Rob, Christy and I went over to her friend Christina's house for a veritable feast of turkey, ham, and sides made even more amzaing by the fact that they were cooked (perfectly!) by a vegetarian.  That kind of blows my mind.  I took over some cinnamon-chocolate cigarette cookies as a chaser and then the five of us (me, Rob, Christy, Christina, and Christina's husband Frank) went to see Rise of the Guardians.

This has been a great year for animated movies.  I don't know about for regular ones but for animation, it's definitely been a "more is more" kind of year.  Dreamworks Animation has been getting considerably more polished since Kung Fu Panda and are really emerging as a quality alternative to Disney.

Jack Frost (Chris Pine) is a fun, happy-go-lucky spirit of winter until he is captured by Santa's (Alec Baldwin) yeti and told he is being made a Guardian in order to fight the Boogeyman, Pitch (Jude Law).  Jack is not enthused by the idea but when the Tooth Fairy's (Isla Fisher) realm is attacked, he bands together with Tooth, Santa, the irascible Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman) and the surprisingly powerful Sandman to stop Pitch's Nightmares from robbing all the children of their belief.

This was an incredibly fun holiday movie and my only criticism (and it's a minor one at that) is that I felt like it skewed to a younger demographic than I would have liked.  It was beautifully done, visually, and the voicework was top-notch (especially from Hugh Jackman and Alec Baldwin) but I would have liked to have seen a bit more wit and a bit more bite to the script.  I have no doubts that it will be beloved by many families on its home release, I just don't know if it'll have the staying power of some of the more age-inclusive holiday classics.