DVD Review: The Tale of Despereaux

The Tale of Despereaux, A Recipe

Take one part mouse.
Add two enormous ears.
Toss in a poorly written story in the Elenorian Chivalric style.
Add a pinch of computer rendering.
Mix well, bake for an hour and a half, and then watch.
This recipe will yield a 90-minute movie that is great for younger viewers, though most adults will consider it bland and boring.

Despereaux is a movie about a mouse, a rat, and a princess. The movie starts off with a rat named Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman) sailing on a ship in order to get some soup. Roscuro scurries through the town, finds the royal soup maker, and then attempts to get a sip. However, due to circumstances beyond his control, he tumbles into the soup and is almost eaten by the queen herself. The queen, seeing the offending rodent, passes out and dies. Adding a highly unrealistic twist to the story (think King Henry), the king is so saddened that he bans soup forever and locks himself up. Oh, and he also bans rats.

Fast forward a few days/months/years (we never know how long) and we see the birth of a new and interesting creature, Despereaux (Matthew Broderick). Despereaux is a mouse, and one with ears roughly half the size of his body. Due to this unusual aspect, he develops no fear of humans, is able to do amazing feats of acrobatics, and doesn't act like a mouse should. Heck, the youngling doesn't even cower when shown a knife or a cat. These unnatural feelings and actions cause the young mouse to be alienated from the society.

Due to the fact that he is an outcast Despereaux is eventually removed from the community, and thus he is sent to live outside of its boundaries. Through a series of events and interactions, the young mouse meets up with Roscuro (no, the rat didn't just disappear, he is still around) and they go through a series of adventures. Within these adventures, their friendship grows, disappears, and then grows again, as the two lonely rodents work to bring soup back.

Though I normally like this sort of spoof of the chivalric story, I actually did not like Despereaux that much. The movie seems too forced, too contrived, and just doesn't flow very well. The book gave us a nice area to work in, and had several amusing stories and situations, but the movie doesn't follow it well. No, Despereaux takes several unrelated adventures and tries to piece them together. While this might work for the target audience (read: preschoolers), it didn't work for me and I am betting that it will not work for most other adults.

Though I do not like the story, I do like how it is presented. I believe that CG is overused these days, and it causes movies to lose my interest, but for stories like Despereaux CG is a needed reality. With this in mind, I actually liked the use, quality, and rendering of the graphics. I could see hairs moving realistically, the mouths were roughly film quality, and the reflections in the water are worthy of awards. Short of a few bad sequences (notably when Despereaux returns to his village covered in flour), the overall quality of the movie is really impressive. If it looks this good on DVD, I wonder how it will look on Blu-ray.

Article Author: Robert M. Barga

Robert M. Barga is a student at The Ohio State University (Go Bucks) and is majoring in Political Science, with an American Policy focus, and minoring in English. He is an avid blogger on Whalertly, technology guru, and gamer (computer, table-top, and console). …

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