I love Guillermo del Toro. Seeing his name as co-producer for the new animated film, Rise of the Guardians was the biggest draw to go see it. Having spent all my Christmases in the tropics, I knew

nothing of Jack Frost—the mischievous winter spirit who makes the world around him ice up, who starts snowball fights and gets kids laughing with his mischief.

Whether one can relate or not to the wonder of snow falling outside the window, on the street, to making a snowman with friends and giving it a name, it doesn’t really matter—anyone who has gone through childhood can connect with the central idea of Rise of the Guardians. The world needs wonder, hope and dreams, and they thrive in the hearts and minds of children.

The film was co-produced by William Joyce who wrote The Guardians of Childhood (upon which the movie is based), the film is dedicated to his daughter who died during the production of the film. This is also the first full-length feature film directed by Peter Ramsey who put in a lot of work as a storyboard artist over the last two decades.

All that art department background is evident as the visuals do so much to push the story forward. There’s the way little bits of ice form on windows, buildings and streets as Jack Frost appears. But most stunning for me is the way they show how fear enters the minds of the little ones.

The Sandman (nicknamed Sandy) is the Guardian of Dreams and here, he’s represented as a baby-like man, wrapped in a robe of gold. He doesn’t talk, presumably because he wishes not to wake sleeping children. He brings his morphing golden dream dust to the sleepers and fills their head with wondrous things.

But Pitch comes along (looking more like Sandman in Neil Gaiman’s comic actually) long, lean, pale and in black with a shock of black hair—with his own nightmare dust, that he sinks into sleeping minds, tainting and poisoning all of Sandy’s handiwork.

Pitch, or the Bogeyman (Jude Law) and his black nightmare dust—often in the shape of dark black steeds (like the charges of the Nazgul in Lord of the Rings) fights a battle against The Guardians: Santa Claus (Alec Baldwin), the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher), Sandy and new “recruit” Jack Frost (Chris Pine).

The visuals trump the plot for the most part, but the likes of me will always be affected anyway by tales that celebrate the magic of childhood. It reminds me of lines from a poem called “Turning Ten” by Billy Collins “It seems only yesterday I used to believe /there was nothing under my skin but light./ If you cut me I could shine. / But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life, / I skin my knees. I bleed.”

And how can the dreamy ones like me resist the image of Jack Frost looking at the moon and looking for answers from it? This one is for little ones and for the grown ups who still have the ability to dream and believe in magic.

Rise of the Guardians celebrates childhood and does it well. Best enjoyed on the IMAX format.

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Brace yourselves, The Hobbit finally opens next week!