Fox takes its shot at the animation crown with an Epic trailer.

Putting aside the unfortunate "comic relief" of Aziz Ansari's wisecracking slug, this looks quite promising.  The film looks gorgeous and there does seem to be an attempt to tell a mostly serious adventure story.  I missed the earlier, nearly wordless teaser from awhile back, but both previews use Snow Patrol's "What If the Storm Ends?" to rather powerful effect, similar to how well 20th Century Fox used Creed's "Higher" for their Titan A.E. campaign thirteen years ago.  I could do with a little less celebrity casting (Christoph Waltz is distracting as the heavy), but a female protagonist in a film like this is always a plus. Also a plus: Danny Elfman is doing the score.  What's curious is how much this feels like a Dreamworks film, in a good way of course.  For years every wise-cracking animal cartoon was accused of ripping off Dreamworks even as DWA made but a single such movie, Over the Hedge (arguably the best such film in that sub-genre), which came out right at the same time as the likes of Open Season, Barnyard: The Original Party Animals, and The Ant Bully.  This feels more like an attempt to capture the, well, epic adventure found in the Rise of the Guardians, How to Train Your Dragon, the Kung Fu Panda series, and Puss In Boots.  Still, say what you will about the diminishing creative returns for the Ice Age series, Rio was a genuinely entertaining and arguably original animated feature.  As I said a few weeks ago, the holes in Pixar's armor has allowed its competitors to come out in full force.  This seems to be Fox taking its best shot.  Epic opens May 24th, 2013.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson        

Review: Rise of the Guardians (2012) is a stunning disappointment, with little substance, no character.

Rise of the Guardians

2012
97 minutes
rated PG

by Scott Mendelson

Rise of the Guardians is an astonishing exercise in generic storytelling, with so little new to bring to the narrative plate that even a morsel of good ideas can't save it from tedium.  I can't speak to the source material, but the film amounts to a high concept idea ("What if the various holiday mascots formed a superhero group?") where no more imagination was offered after the initial pitch.  The story is basically a Mad Libs team-superhero origin story, where we follow a new recruit into a new world and learn the mythology through his eyes.  That the story shamefully rips off the first X-Men is less of a problem than the heroic cohorts having almost no discernible characteristics beyond their costumes and holiday-related duties.  With paper-thin characterization and no real surprises in the offering, Rise of the Guardians amounts to a mostly dull effort that diminishes both big-budget animation and superhero stories at the same time.

Who should die in the Dora The Explorer movie? We need *your help* to decide who should be killed off!

As was announced last month, Paramount will be stocking up its post-Dreamworks animation slate with a number of Nickelodeon properties, among them being the long-awaited first feature film for Dora the Explorer.  It figures that we'd finally get a big-screen Dora adventure just as my daughter is about to outgrow said franchise, but them's the breaks.  Anyway, Dora the Explorer is still among the more entertaining shows aimed at the preschool set and few can deny that it revolutionized the kids-show format with its interactive 'let's go on an adventure' template.  And now, about twelve years after its premiere, we're finally getting a movie.  So the question immediately becomes: who's gonna die?  It's a movie and said big-screen adventure has to do something to matter in the broad continuity, otherwise it just becomes a 4-5 part episode projected in DLP 3D.  And we all know that the easiest way to achieve narrative 'relevance' in a longstanding property is to kill off a major character.  So, as we await the big-screen spectacular that is Dora the Explorer 3D, let us discuss just which longstanding character is the most likely to perish at either the second act climax or the very finale of the picture.

Comic Con catch-up - Tim Burton's Frankenweenie gets a charming 1950s-style trailer.

There was a surprising lack of trailers leaked out of Comic Con, with several of the big guns (The Lone Ranger, Iron Man 3, etc.) being shown exclusively to the Comic Con audience (no, I'm not posting any alleged Man of Steel bootlegs, we all can wait until Friday).  But the best spot of what was released has to be this charming and amusing 1950s-style trailer for Tim Burton's Frankenweenie.  After two genuine disappointments in a row, Tim Burton arguably has to prove that it was just a blip on the radar and not some kind of a late-career rut.  As is, it's no secret that animation is where Burton puts most of his original ideas anyway, since nearly all of his live action films, even his best ones (Ed Wood, Sleepy Hollow, Sweeney Todd, Batman Returns, etc.) are variations on someone else's work.  With the exceptions of Edward Scissorhands and Beetlejuice, all of Burton's live-action films have been adaptations of some kind, which makes this project somewhat of a conundrum.  Yes, it's a full-length animated remake of a 25-minute live-action short he directed back in 1984, but whatever ideas hes cribbing from were his own in the first place.  Odd.  As it is, the once novel idea of doing a somewhat scary animated film has long become accepted, with the successes of Monster House and Coraline as well as the upcoming ParaNorman.  On the plus side, it's the first Tim Burton project since Mars Attacks! way back in 1996 not to feature Johnny Depp and/or Helena Bonham Carter.  Anyway, Frankenweenie opens in 3D(!) on October 5th.  As always, we'll see.

Scott Mendelson

Trailer: Ice Age 4 celebrates Scrat's 10th year trying to get a single acorn.

Yes, the first Ice Age was released in Spring of 2002, so it will soon be ten years since Scrat first started trying to catch that infernal acorn.  The third Ice Age was one of the most successful films of all time overseas.  As of this writing, it's seventh-biggest foreign haul of all time, it was third back in 2009.  So a sequel was inevitable.  For what it's worth, the third picture (Dawn of the Dinosaurs) was pretty entertaining, and even in a second-run 2D screening you could tell that those who paid for 3D got their money's worth.  I will always have a certain fondness for said third entry, as it's the first movie I took my daughter to, just shy of her second birthday.  To my surprise, she more or less sat in rapt attention, only losing interest during the final reel.  Yes, Scrat was her favorite character.  Fox drops this one on July 13th, 2012.  If Allison wants to go, I will be seeing it accordingly.  Thanks to Digital Spy for the 'get'.

Scott Mendelson