A Few Bright Spots in an Overall Glum, Dark Production

Rating: 4/10 (29 November 2012)

The Guardians here are not the owls of Ga'hoole, nor Green Lantern's Oans, but rather fairy-tale creatures from Earthly legend — Santa Claus (here called North and Russian from the sound of him), Bunny (guess which holiday, and sporting an Australian accent and golden boomerangs), Tooth (leader of, and only adult in, a veritable air corps of fairies), and Sandy (the Sandman, where they saved on casting costs by giving him no dialog) — and the thing they're supposed to guard is, I guess, the innocent sense of wonder of the world's children. Standing in opposition to this is the boogeyman Pitch Black. Since my attention wandered often during the movie, I imagined a method actor approaching the director (Peter Ramsey, in case you care) and asking "What's my motivation here?", because ole Pitch is out to replace all children's dreams with nightmares for no obvious reason other than that's his thing.
Invited into this mix by the Man in the Moon (who seems to pull a lot of strings without ever saying a word) is Jack Frost, a young guy who walks around barefoot on frozen lakes and has been doing so for 3 centuries without any idea of who he used to be or why he got stuck with the job of frostifying stuff. He's kind of lonely, since humans can't see him and occasionally walk right thru him, but the MitM has him tabbed as the next Guardian, so the current lot can see him just fine. Tooth (voiced by Isla Fisher, who even SOUNDS adorable) even takes kind of a shine to him. Only they don't know if he's got what it takes to stand up to Pitch.
Standing in as representatives of all humanity's children is a small group of playmates from some anonymous small town in the US, led by Jamie, the most credulous kid on Earth, who still believes in all the Guardians even after everyone else has given up on them as a result of Pitch's machinations. His delightful little sister Sophie made me smile every time she came on screen.
There are several manufactured crises, the temporary triumph of the bad guy (ho-hum), a moment or 2 of self-revelation, and the Tinker Bell clap at the end that saves the day for sweetness and innocence. Santa's helpers (the elves literally IN their pointed hats and the big, gruff yeti) were kind of charming visual comic relief, and North and Bun were refreshingly grumpy and irritable, so credit to the screenwriters for not surrendering to convention. But the movie was both literally and figuratively dark and didn't offer much in the line of holiday merriment. Are these really the kind of folx you'd have wanted to hang out with when you were a kid? Nope. They're not such good company for adults, either.