DreamWorks Animation’s “Rise of the Guardians” at the Rome Film Festival

The movie will receive the “Vanity Fair International Award for Cinematic Excellence”

The Rome Film Festival (Festival Internazionale del Film di Roma, November 9 – 17, Auditorium Parco della Musica) and Vanity Fair will award the new “Vanity Fair International Award for Cinematic Excellence” this year to Rise of the Guardians, the latest 3D film by DreamWorks Animation SKG, Inc. (Nasdaq: DWA). This new acknowledgment by the Festival is dedicated to a film that best expresses the innovative, artistic and strategic contribution made by production and distribution companies that have distinguished themselves in the world of contemporary cinema. Director Peter Ramsey will accept the award on behalf of the film and DreamWorks Animation. The awards ceremony will be followed by the international theatrical premiere of Rise of the Guardians, distributed on November 21, 2012, and inspired by the series of illustrated books “The Guardians of Childhood” by William Joyce. The ceremony and screening will also be attended by DreamWorks Animation’s Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Katzenberg and Executive Producer Guillermo del Toro.

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Rise of the Guardians: Film Review

The Bottom Line
A lively but derivative 3D storybook spree for some unlikely action heroes.

The DreamWorks Animation production features the voices of Alec Baldwin, Hugh Jackman, Isla Fisher and Chris Pine.

A very odd assortment of mythical childhood figures, some of them afflicted with severe emotional insecurities and inferiority complexes, are thrown together as an unlikely set of action heroes in Rise of the Guardians, an attractively designed but overly busy and derivative mishmash of kid-friendly elements.

A sort of Justice League or Avengers equivalent made up of the fearsome team of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman and Jack Frost, this final DreamWorks Animation production set to be distributed by Paramount will play in a predictably agreeable and profitable fashion to small fry but will skew young despite the presence of an excellent voice cast. The world premiere took place Oct. 10 at the Mill Valley Film Festival in advance of the Nov. 21 commercial bow.

Based on the book series Guardians of Childhood by William Joyce, as well as on the author’s short film The Man in the Moon, the script by David Lindsay-Abaire (Robots, Rabbit Hole) plays fast and loose with these legendary fixtures of childhood, attaching to them all sorts of neuroses, feelings of inadequacy and the sense, or threat, of being ignored. Some might find this tack delightfully mischievous, but it’s just as easy to reject as ridiculous the notion that Jack Frost — a free spirit very much like Peter Pan who can fly around anywhere he wants — suffers from an emotional trauma he suffered hundreds of years earlier.

Continue reading The Hollywood Reporter “Rise Of The Guardians” review