The Tale of Despereaux has an all star cast telling the story of a small mouse with big ears who thinks of himself as a Gentleman. As with all fairy tales, it is necessary for someone’s mother to die, that someone is usually the hero of the story. Not so in The Tale of Despereaux. The poor mother in this case is the Queen of Dor, who is frightened by a rat named Roscuro, faints, and then drowns in a bowl of soup.
Dor is famous for it’s soup, but now the King of Dor hates soup and rats and outlaws both. This causes a grey cloud that never rains to form over the Kingdom. Well, it is a fairly tale after all, so a few bad things have to happen.
Under the capitol city of Dor there are two worlds-possibly more-Rat World and Mouse World. Rat World is not a very nice place and this is where the accidental Queen murderer Roscuro finds himself. He doesn’t fit in, as he likes the world of humans and not the world of rats. Mouse World is where our hero Despereaux lives and is a failure as a mouse, he refuses to cower and scurry.
This was a beautifully made film, with a feeling of art instead of animation. The mice were very well done, managing to look like both mice and people at the same time. The rats had much the same feel as the rats from Ratatouille, except that they were all better dressed. The human characters were a bit off, as is usual in this kind of film. They go to great lengths to make the mice and rats looks as photo realistic as possible and then give us goofball renderings like the ugly father and ugly daughter and the highly stylized King and Princess. They might as well have been different species like the rats and mice. Which I suppose was the idea.
Among the odd bits in The Tale of Despereaux was the fact that no one seems to find talking rats and mice at all out of the ordinary. There was also a magic Chef made from vegetables who urged the real Chef to make better soup and not serve the Kingdom dishwater.
There is a great deal made out of the fact that the King is depressed because his wife has died. The King goes into mourning and this is shown as a bad thing. Only when the Cook disobeys the King’s orders and makes soup does life return to normal and the King realize the error of his ways. Not all monarchies are like Henry VIII. Queen Victoria stayed in mourning for the rest of her life when her husband died. Was she wrong to do that? I don’t think the King was being overly selfish in his sorrow, but maybe that’s just me.
It was a beautiful film to watch and I look forward to more movies made with this style of animation. I have seen all the Ice Age/Monsters Inc/Incredibles style of computer animation I care to see. The techonlogy is now in place to make real movies, not just silly cartoons. The Tale of Despereaux is a step in the right direction.
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nice blog keep posting
Well, I’ll do what I can. Thanks for stopping by.