Avengers for Kids!

Rating: 8/10 (30 November 2012)

Rise of the Guardians is about how the myths and legends that we've heard of when we were kids all live in a parallel dimension that bring joy, dreams and protection for the children of the world. And if those children believe in these so-called guardians, these legends can interact with that world and they will get stronger. So one day, the Boogeyman, finds a way to manipulate the guardians and make them lose their powers and the children's' belief in them. That's as far as I'll care to go I guess.
I've been really looking forward to this movie ever since last year. First it was called "The Guardians of Childhood". Then it was called just "The Guardians". And then it was eventually named "Rise of the Guardians". Anyway, the reason I was looking forward to this movie was because I liked the idea of taking these light-hearted characters we all knew and loved, and putting them in a more gritty and serious movie. Also, after watching the trailer, I started looking forward to the animation, especially. Ever since How to Train Your Dragon, DreamWorks have started to reach the level of Pixar in animation, so I was really looking forward to them making an action fantasy movie.
I really enjoyed this movie, most of the time. The movie starts out really great, but then the story starts going a bit downhill. But while the story gets worse and worse as the movie progresses, the animation and the world we're introduced to keep on impressing. It's really clever how they explain why the ones that don't believe in these guardians, don't see them, and so on.
I was a bit disappointed at how the action scenes weren't as long as I'd hoped for, and there was barely any scenes where all the guardians worked together in a battle. Also, the final battle was pretty pathetic. It's near the end of the movie where the movie has become so light-hearted that it doesn't do any of those awesome action scenes with spectacular effects and great character movement, and instead pulls of a typical kids movie slapstick battle with lots of kids humor and stuff. That was really disappointing.
But don't get the wrong idea, this movie was very good. The animation, the characters and the landscapes were all animated beautifully.
The movie also had a lot of heart to it. At some points, it felt a bit too light-hearted, and I sometimes wished it would go back to the dark and more serious tone that was found in the first act.
The characters were very interesting, and the main character was well-developed. But some of the characters were a bit underdeveloped, and the kids could sometimes get on my nerves. Both in the movie, and the theater.
The 3D was great. I'm not a big fan of 3D. I usually go out of a 3D movie saying "I'll never see a 3D movie again, most likely". Do you remember that The Avengers was in 3D? No, I don't either, but my ticket says so. But I'll most likely remember this movie's 3D, and this is also the best 3D movie of the year ... at least so far. Go see it.