LOS ANGELES – A very odd assortment of mythical childhood figures, some of them afflicted with severe emotional insecurities and inferiority complexes, are thrown together as an unlikely set of action heroes in “The Rise of the Guardians,” an attractively designed but overly busy and derivative mishmash of kid-friendly elements.

A sort of Justice League or Avengers equivalent made up of the fearsome team of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy, the Sandman and Jack Frost, this final DreamWorks Animation production set to be distributed by Paramount will play in a predictably agreeable and profitable fashion to small fry but will skew young despite the presence of an excellent voice cast.

Based on the book series “Guardians of Childhood” by William Joyce, as well as on the author’s short film, “The Man in the Moon,” the script by David Lindsay-Abaire (“Robots,” “Rabbit Hole”) plays fast and loose with these legendary fixtures of childhood, attaching to them all sorts of neuroses, feelings of inadequacy and the sense, or threat, of being ignored. Some might find this tack delightfully mischievous, but it’s just as easy to reject as ridiculous the notion that Jack Frost – a free spirit very much like Peter Pan who can fly around anywhere he wants – suffers from an emotional trauma he suffered hundreds of years earlier.