Country: United States
Genre: Animation
Director: Sam Fell/Robert Stevenhagen
Year: 2008
Rating: 
WORTH A LOOK
Considering that The Tale of Despereaux won a Newberry Award, the story is surprisingly weak. The best story element by far is the mouse community’s efforts to education it’s young. For example, the mouse teachers show their students pictures of knives, mousetraps and cats, encouraging the youngsters to be afraid. Author Kate DiCamillo and screenwriter Will McRobb are witty enough to show that conformism has survival value but that the big leaps in any society are taken by nonconformists. They are also honest about the danger of nonconformity.
If only the rest of the story were as interesting and amusing.
In a kingdom that is obsessed by soup, rat Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman) inadvertently causes a catastrophe that leads to the banning of both soup and rats in the kingdom. For his refusal to be afraid, Despereaux (Matthew Broderick) is banished from mouse society. Trials and tribulations follow, but all is resolved and everyone lives happily ever after. The end.
Boring.
Actually, the really cool part about The Tale of Despereaux is how well the animators have translated the visual style of the book. It may not be the most detailed animation ever — you can see where certain cost saving shortcuts were taken — but the charm of the illustrations is retained.
This is no small thing. I am sick to death of the Disney style where everyone has huge eyes and everything is cute, cute, cute. In The Tale of Despereaux, the king looks like a king. The rats look like rats. The mice have loads of character as well.
The voice talent serves the story well, too. For a long time now, Dustin Hoffman has been pretty awful in movies, but he’s just fine as Roscuro. I think alot of his problem is his physical stiffness and acting tics. In live action, you can see how desperately he wants the audience to love him — it’s loathsome. But as a cartoon character, Hoffman has a new freedom. It suits him.
I don’t want to make too much of The Tale of Despereaux. It’s pretty to look at and the sequences involving the education of the mice are very funny (all the best moments are in the trailer). Unlike that Jerry Bruckheimer movie about secret agent hamsters, it won’t make you want to gouge out your eyes. Besides, your children might enjoy it.
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