The Guardian Brothers (2016) - Through the Eyes of Cat

Number Rolled: 331

Movie Name/Year: The Guardian Brothers (2016)

Tagline: None

Genre: Animation, Comedy, Family

Length: 103 minutes

Rating: NR

Production Companies: Light Chaser Animation Studios, The Weinstein Company

Producers: Michael Lappin, Zhou Yu

Director: Gary Wang

Writers: Dan Edelstein, Terrence Stone, Gary Wang

Actors: Mike Birbiglia, Mel Brooks, Dan Fogler, Steve French, Nicole Kidma, Raymond J. Lee, Edward Norton, Cristina Pucelli, Meryl Streep, Bella Thorne, Bruce Winant, Perry Yung

Stunt Doubles: None

Blurb from Netflix: When a Chinese family's soup shop is targeted for sabotage by a competitor, two guardians from the spirit world leave retirement to protect them.

Cat’s Point of View:

At the outset, The Guardian Brothers looked cute and like it would be a lot of fun. I wish that I could say that it managed something more than solid mediocrity.

I wanted so much for this movie to knock my socks off.  The star power of the cast was undeniable. I’ve been a fan of Mel Brooks’ (Spaceballs: The Animated Series,. Mr. Peabody & Sherman, Leap!) irreverent sense of humor. Nicole Kidman (Australia, The Railway Man, Lion) is the very epitome of elegance and grace. When lending only voices to actors’ roles, though, it has to be a right match or the animated characters just don’t pop.

Unfortunately, that was largely the case for me. I just couldn’t reconcile Edward Norton’s (The Painted Veil, Moonrise Kingdom, Collateral Beauty) voice with the character of Yu Lei. It was something that bugged me through the whole movie – no matter how hard I tried to get past it.

I did, however, enjoy Meryl Streep (Ricki and the Flash, Into the Woods, The Post) as the Narrator and Dan Fogler (The Goldbergs, Scenic Route, Europa Report) voicing Shen Tu.

The story was interesting. I liked the glimpse into another culture and I could see where it tied into the shared spiritual landscape as the likes of Mulan (1998). It was just missing something that would take it to that next level. It’s not even that it wasn’t a ‘mouse house’ movie. Everything just keeps falling back to Norton’s voice. Don’t get me wrong – his performance wasn’t bad. It just didn’t fit the images on the screen for me.

All in all, this is a movie that would be ideal to watch with younger kids. They might get more of a kick out of it without overthinking everything else.

Languages

Speech Available: English, French, German, Italian, Spanish,

Subtitles Available: English [CC], French, German, Spanish, Simplified Chinese

Rotten Tomatoes Critic Score – None

Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score – 27%

Metascore - None

Metacritic User Score – None

IMDB Score – 5.4/10

Trust the Dice: Cat’s Rating – 2.5/5

Trust-the-Dice’s Parental Advisory Rating: PG

Movie Trailer: