Movie Review 23: The Tale of Despereaux

Title: The Tale of Despereaux

Director: Sam Fell, Robert Stevenhagen

Running Time: 1 hour 23 minutes

Genre: Animation

This story is about how a rat, Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman) who indirectly caused the death of a queen and thus caused him and all other rats to be banished from the kingdom. It also talks about how a mouse, Despereaux (Matthew Broderick) who is born differently from other mice and was shunned by his society. The story goes later develops where the fate of this rat and mouse is intertwined as one seek forgiveness while the other seek glory.

First of all, do NOT bring your children to watch this movie. It is by far one of the few animation film that has a really complicated storyline (not as confusing as Final Fantasy, though). The children would have a really hard time in understanding what is happening.

Also, this film is set in a dark and sombre mood, and while it has some comedic actions, you just could not bring yourself to laugh out loud. That is not to say that the story is not engaging... it is as there are some action sequences that make you sit at the edge of the seat, but the problem is with the mixture. It is too complicated for children, however, the values presented such as chivalry, forgiveness, truth, blah blah blah are presented in a very childish manner. So, adults would not feel right watching this kind of film. Despite that, there are values which are unsuitable for children, like betrayal, vanity, pride etc. being the major themes all over the film.

If you're those who's looking for superb graphics, look somewhere else. The graphics are mostly of last generation, with almost none effort spend on humans at all. The rat and the mouse (the main protagonists) are not cute at all too.

In conclusion, it's a very short movie that is unsuitable for children or adults.

Observation: How did Despereaux managed to turn the page of the story book to read it?

Bottomline: Short and disappointing

Bamboo Rating: 2.5 / 5.0