The 3D animated film Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole is part morality tale and part epic adventure. It centers on Soren, a young barn owlet (voiced by Jim Sturgess of Across the Universe) who believes wholeheartedly in the bedtime stories his father, Noctus (Hugo Weaving), tells him about The Guardians, a group of owl warriors who long ago protected the whole avian kingdom from evildoers. But Soren’s brother, Kludd (Ryan Kwanten of True Blood) isn’t convinced. This only serves to deepen the rivalry between the siblings who are just learning to glide from branch to branch.
When the pair’s unsupervised flying competition lands them both on the forest floor, they are owl-napped and delivered to a group of fascist, martial flyers called the Pure Ones. The group, led by a snowy white named Nyra (Helen Mirren) and her shadowy mate Metalbeak (Joel Edgerton, doing what sounds to be a Jeremy Irons impression), are absconding with scores of young birds and turning the Tytos like Soren and Kludd into warriors, while converting “lesser” owls like a little red dwarf named Gylfie (Emily Barclay) into moon-blinked slaves.
So Soren must escape and seek the help of the mythical Guardians at their distant home called Ga’Hoole. A lute-playing warrior bard named Twilight (Anthony LaPaglia), a twitchy burrowing owl named Digger (David Wenham, Lord of the Rings’s Faramir and 300’s Dilios, in familiar territory), and Gylfie all go along for the ride. During their journey and in the battles that ensue, the ragtag bunch learns about friendship, heroism, sacrifice, and doing the right thing.
As in other Tolkien-esque epics, there are many more characters with difficult to pronounce and impossible to remember names, including Allomere (Sam Neill), Otulissa (Abbie Cornish) and Ezelryb (Geoffrey Rush). That doesn’t mean that Legend of the Guardians isn’t worth watching. It just means that if you’re like me and still can’t tell the difference between a Pidgeotto and Pidgeot, you should come prepared with your thinking cap…or a pen and paper.
Director Zack Snyder, who made 3D out of blood and guts even without the glasses in his adaptation of the graphic novel 300, proves once again that he knows how to work with computer-generated images. Scenes of the birds flying in rain storms and up through wind tunnels are breathtaking and the owls themselves are rendered in beautiful, painstaking detail by the people who brought you Happy Feet, as one trailer proudly proclaims.
But Legend of the Guardians, as adapted by John Orloff and Emil Stern from Kathryn Lasky’s young-adult novel series, is no feel-good, sunshiny bird musical. As in Lord of the Rings and 300, serious war is afoot. So parents should be prepared for betrayal, sharpened owl talons wearing even sharper metal armor, and death. There’s no blood but one fiery death scene may not sit well with the youngest members of your brood.
For the eight and older set, Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga’Hoole is sure to please. Although the end of the film feels rushed, the visual effects throughout are well executed; the story is engaging, if familiar; and the voice performances are mostly top-notch. With the exception of one mid-film cheesey pop song misstep, the score is also first-rate.
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