Review of The Tale of Despereaux (2008) by Robert T — 05 Dec 2009

Fun little movie. I was not really that excited for this film when I saw the trailer for it late last year. The animation looked interesting, but from the trailer, the story was a little uninteresting.

Like what, a mouse with big ears? Kind of reminded me of "Dumbo" in a way. After viewing the film just a couple of days ago, the film did have some fun moments. One thing I wasn't sure about was the magical vegetable.

Where did that come from and how was it magical? I noticed when the chef opened a book, the magical vegetable appears. Another thing that I was a little confused was the name of the rat and the mouse.

They both had the same name, and was there a purpose? I don't remember that the rat gave his name out to the mouse, so I am assuming both of the characters never knew they had the same first name? At first, I thought the young mouse might have been the son of the rat after remembering the trailer while watching the film's first 20-minutes.

Some things that I thought were strong were the film's animation. It was very unique and it looked very similar to a pop-up book. I was hoping for more of that style, but the animators had other ideas.

And I have to agree with most of the reviews here, the film was not that special -- even though the trailer made it looked like it did. It did not have that spark like other past animations. The film did have an unique take on teaching young kids to forgive, but I thought the animation did not portray that message strong enough.

Young kids will probably forget the forgive message after a week. In addition, one character that I thought was a little random was the young servant girl. She came out of nowhere. Yeah the film did provide some back story on her, but the way the animation introduced her was a little too sudden.

Overall, the film was entertaining, to an extent. I enjoyed watching it, but there are better CGI animation out there available.