The story involves a seaman rat called Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman) who accidentally ends up spoiling the Soup Day (the most important celebration of the year) of the kingdom of Dor. His actions cause the King of Dor to order all rats hunted down and killed. At the same time in the Mouseworld of Dor a tiny mouse called Desperaux (Matthew Broderick) is born. Desperaux is different from the other mice in many ways: he has huge ears and he is not afraid of anything.
As Desperaux grows older, his curiosity leads him to the library of the castle where he finds the fantastic world of books and stories. His little heart longs to be a knight in shining armor, and when he meets the Princess Pea (Emma Watson), he tells her he's a gentleman and becomes her friend - and being friends with a human is something to be punished for in the Mouseworld.
Desperaux meets Roscuro the Rat and they become friends as well. Roscuro is feeling guilty and after finding out about the friendship between Desperaux and the Princess, tries to make an apology. But things don't always turn out the way you would want them to turn...
The animation style of the movie is amazingly sharp and realistic, but it does not compensate the lack of the story. The story is very thin, like the viewer is waiting for the whole duration of the movie for the story to finally pick up, and it never really does.
Even though Desperaux has his name in the movie title, it feels as if he is just a supporting character, like there was no lead character in the story at all. The characters are all lacking something. Only the "pig girl" Miggery Sow (Tracey Ullman) who pretends to be a princess is somewhat interesting. The animals are cute, that must be admitted, but the humans look plastic.
Because of the cute characters Tale of Desperaux is best for young children. At least the school group of about 8-year-olds in the screening I went was cheering at the end of the film.
Directed by Sam Fell, Robert Stevenhagen
Written by Gary Ross, based on Kate DiCamillos's novel
Cast (English voices) Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman, Emma Watson, Tracey Ullman, Kevin Kline
IMDb http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0420238/
1 comment:
My thoughts are quite the same, even though I might give this film three stars for the fact that is was done a bit differently than the animations usually are. Especially all the techniques used to create different moods and athmosperes in this film.
We watched this with our daughter and she was thrilled, but I noticed that towards the end she lost her interest for some reason. Maybe she would agree with you about the lack of the real leading character. But the mean cat, oh my, she loved it and was a bit scared of that mean thing too...
I really enjoyed the animation itself and that little character, Desperaux was cute as a button. But as you said, the storyline was not very strong, but in the world of animation I have seen much worse. That's why I would give this one three stars :-)
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