On Monday night in New York, DreamWorks
Animation held the first metropolitan-area screening of Rise of the
Guardians, its highly anticipated awards hopeful, which previously had
screened only once, on Wednesday night at the Mill Valley Film Festival in
Northern California.
Based on the quality of
this film and the relative weakness of the rest of this year's animated feature
field, it is probably the film to beat at both the Academy Awards and Golden
Globe Awards.
Guardians, a 3D film, is sort of a
computer-animated version of The Avengers. Fundamentally, it is a story
of good vs. evil, with a team of heroes uniting to take on one really bad guy.
The good guys are a brooding Jack Frost, voiced by
Chris Pine; a badass Santa Claus, voiced by Oscar nominee
Alec Baldwin; an Australian Easter Bunny, voiced by
Hugh Jackman; a flirty Tooth Fairy, voiced by Isla
Fisher; and the Sandman, who speaks nary a word. They come together to
defend children from Pitch (voiced by Oscar nominee Jude Law),
also known as "The Boogeyman," who is the embodiment of all of their fears.
Several people noted Monday night that this film
doesn't look like or feel like most others from DreamWorks Animation, which tend to be glossier and more concerned with getting consistent laughs
than Guardians, which places a much greater emphasis on story
development.
Finally, for my money, one of the most
impressive elements of the film is the score composed by the ridiculously
prolific 51-year-old Frenchman Alexandre Desplat, who has
received four best original score Oscar nominations in the past five years and
this year has scored no fewer than five major awards contenders in
Guardians, Moonrise Kingdom, Rust & Bone,
Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. Because an individual can be
nominated for multiple works in the best original score, Oscar category, it wouldn't be at all shocking
to see Desplat wind up with two or three this year.
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