A Flawed, yet enjoyable experience

Rating: 8/10 (23 April 2013)

A rock solid animated flick that will have kids wildly entertained, but there is also some great action, whip-fast writing and incredible animation there for an older audience to enjoy, granted that they're willing to sift through the more cliché "kids-movie" tropes.
Firstly of note is the stellar voice work. Chris Pine leads, while Hugh Jackman and Alec Baldwin accompanies him in this wild adventure while he fights Pitch, played by Jude Law. Pine is extraordinarily refreshing, contrasting the annoying and whiny voices of most animated movies today with a deep and mature voice. The characters are all pretty familiar, but have their own creative and amusing spin put on them. Santa is a Russian, spouting exclamations like "Korsakov!" and "Shostakovich!" (which is fairly amusing, me being a music guy and all) and Bunny is an Australian boomerang wielding boss (no doubt a play on his voice actor Jackman) are among the better of the cast. It's an undoubtedly strong voice crew, and it truly shows.
The animation is stellar, featuring some beautiful effects and sharp details that bring the world alive. It's too bad though, that it's so short, because just an extra 30 minutes would've really allowed the audience to more deeply explore and absorb the goofy yet enjoyable world of the Guardians. Alexandre Desplat also composes yet another enjoyable score for RotG. The guy can churn out score after score, he's becoming the new John Williams!
The pacing is crazy fast, to say the least, but it manages to get the story across well enough. Speaking of which, the Rise of the Guardian's biggest strength and weakness is its story. It begins so mysteriously, which really hooked me at the beginning. When the inevitable twist comes along it's clever, but after that the film loses that mysterious and magical quality that made the first half of the film so great in favor for a simple second half. The end is cute and fun, but it's to "Yeah! Yay!" happy-cheery, which proves that Rise of the Guardians has a classic case of identity crisis, where one section is strong, dark, and even mature while the other is childish, simple, and cliché. It's too bad, because the majority of the film is original, enticing and incredibly entertaining.
Rise of the Guardians has great characters, music, and animation and an awesome first half to boot, but it ends up ending too fast and plays it too safe. It's still an entertaining ride with some spectacular action and interesting creativity on display, so let's hope they use their obvious creative ability throughout the whole film instead of opting out for a casual ending for the inevitable sequel.