Review of The Tale of Despereaux (2008) by Walter M — 17 Mar 2010

In "The Tale of Despereaux," Roscuro, a rat, arrives in the Kingdom of Dor just in time for Soup Day. Regretfully, he gets too close to the action, accidentally causing many health code violations and a chain of events that leads to the queen drowning in her soup. So, the king bans both soup and rats, which somehow causes it to not rain anymore. The mice already have enough problems, none of which concern young Despereaux, who is afraid of nothing despite his small size. He even dreams of becoming a knight.

"The Tale of Despereaux" is a charming animated film that suffers from unimpressive animation early on and does not do a very good job of juggling the storylines of the rodent leads, often abandoning either for long stretches of time, sometimes in favor of a dull servant girl. Personally, I would have liked to have known what the story behind the vegetable golem is. Most of the voicework does not really register except for Dustin Hoffman who does a wonderful job as Roscuro and Sigourney Weaver who makes for a marvelously arch narrator. In fact, the movie is surprisingly subversive as Despereaux and Roscuro both go against the grains in their respective communities.(Or maybe it's just that Despereaux does not have the brains to be afraid.) That does not include the narration bemoaning the banning of soup which reminded me of how Bill Hicks used to talk about the criminalization of marijuana. That having been said, I just hope there are no kids reading this...