By Anna Geannopolous
Take all of the key plot points of “The Lord of the Rings,” “Red Wall,” “Harry Potter” and a large staff of excellent animators. Put them in a blender. The result will be a concoction called “The Legend of the Guardians: Owls of Ga’Hoole.” It won’t taste that bad but it will be slightly worse than something you’ve liked before.
This 3D animated film, produced by Warner Bros. and Animal Logic, based on the best selling novels of Kathyrn Lasky seems to have forgotten that audiences actually pay attention to what’s going on in the film–even when they’re wearing 3D glasses.
Two owlet brothers, Soren (voice Jim Sturgess) and Kludd (voice Ryan Kwanten) fall out of their roost only to get kidnapped and enslaved by an evil owl lord “Metalbeak.” Soren plans to escape and find mythic heroes, the Guardians, to help rescue the others. His brother Kludd on the other hand wants to join Metalbeak’s “Pure Ones,” and rule over the lesser owls. A rift between the brothers begins and an “epic” quest ensues.
Tired old plot aside this movie has some serious identity issues to work out. It feels like “Owl’s” director Zack Snyder (“300,” “Watchmen,” “Dawn of the Dead”) read this screenplay and decided to make “300” again but this time with owls.
The more you watch the more questions you have. Why is a snake, the nanny of owl babies, living in a tree? (How did she get into the tree? Don’t owls eat snakes? Don’t snakes eat baby owls?) How and when did owls learn how to harness fire and then use this fire to weld metal objects? How did owls build a complex system of pulleys, fortresses and light torches?
These things are not believable and never explained.
Even the fight scenes where owls lunge at each other with cockfighting-style razor blades and sharpened talon gloves made of metal were a weird mix of terrifying yet too ridiculous to be taken seriously. After the viewer gives up on story all their left with is pretty animation.
But the animation is exquisite. The owls’ eyes are beautiful and expressive. The flight of the owls, complex battle scenes, and even just adorable little owlet emotions were all flawlessly rendered. A lot of work went into this production to make it look this perfect. This is a great 80 million dollar showcase of what skilled 3-D animators can do.
But even the best animator cannot fix a flawed screenplay.
Guardians tried to be an atypical, perhaps even a dark animated feature but it missed the mark simply because it never fully committed. It wasn’t funny. It wasn’t daring. It was caught in limbo. Perhaps they stopped short of anything too compelling to avoid a rating higher than PG. Whatever the reasons, the movie stayed bland.
But “Guardians” is a step in the right direction. Animation studios have proven that they can create beautiful visuals. All they need now is for studios to take them more seriously and embrace the potential they have. Pixar (“Up,” “Wall-E”, “Toy Story 3”) makes good movies because they think about story first, and then cater their animation techniques to best fit that story.
But when will serious films embrace animation as a medium to explore things that human actors simply cannot do?
They say comedy is harder to perfect than drama, so maybe one day we will see animated films that embrace “R” ratings and adult audiences and explore a side of humanity that may only be discovered through cartoons.
“Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole” is rated PG, has a run time of 90 minutes and is playing at Trademark Cinemas Victory Square Stadium 9 at 1:40 p.m., 4:00 p.m., 7:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.