The Tale of Despereaux (2008)
Genre: Animation / Family
Duration: 93 minuten
Alternative title: Despereaux, de Dappere Muis
Country:
United Kingdom / United States
Directed by: Sam Fell and Robert Stevenhagen
Stars: Matthew Broderick, Dustin Hoffman and Emma Watson
IMDb score:
6,1 (41.768)
Releasedate: 18 December 2008
The Tale of Despereaux plot
"Small Mouse. Big Dreams."
The story is set in Dor, a magical kingdom where the sunlight once shone, everyone laughed and the most delicious soup in the world was made. This suddenly changes due to a terrible accident. The royal family is unhappy and the land turns grey, until one day a brave and romantic mouse named Despereaux Tilling is born. The mouse world soon turns out to be too small for his chivalrous ideas and together with his friend Roscuro the rat, he sets out on an adventure. He falls in love with the human princess Pea and he goes on a mission with his friend to save the princess from all her troubles.
Actors and actresses
Despereaux (voice)
Roscuro (voice)
Princess Pea (voice)
Miggery Sow (voice)
Chef Andre (voice)
The Narrator (voice)
Lester (voice)
Boldo (voice)
Botticelli (voice)
Gregory (voice)
Reviews & comments
arno74
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- 8700 messages
- 3342 votes
Reasonable animation, but mainly aimed at small children, although not all scenes are suitable for young children. The animation style is nice, the downside is that the story regularly jumps from one piece to the next, also the rushed ending is cut and pasted. Too bad they didn't pay any attention to good transitions, editing is very bad.
The approach of a brave mouse in a world where mice are expected to be afraid is very nicely conceived and also nicely worked out. Towards the end I found the fun to turn into a nagging moralistic talk about bravery, and that's a shame. The aggression at the end also takes on serious forms and I don't think it fits with the rest of this otherwise aggressive film: a tied up suffering princess surrounded by vicious looking pining rats waiting to eat her not fun for little kids, pure nightmare material.
1.5*. The original premise and the watch-worthy animation style yield 2.5 *, the messy, pushy heroic moral and the scene too scary for small children undermines the film, 1 star deduction for that. Could have been much better.
Not suitable for small children.
Translated from Dutch · View original
RoFFeL
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- 265 messages
- 301 votes
funny film, keeps you interested until the end, even for adults, maybe not for teenagers.
Translated from Dutch · View original
Onderhond
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- 87737 messages
- 13162 votes
Very mediocre.
It's not as bad as its all-American competitors in some respects. A little less manic, a little less forced to try to be funny (and fail completely). That in itself is commendable, this film is a bit more concerned with telling its story.
However, the setup is pretty lame (those mice that should be scared, that mean rat world) and the plot itself is quite boring. Simple morals packed in a fairly simple animation film, that could be just a little bit more.
Visually I thought it was very double. Technically it is really very poor. It looks bare and not very detailed. On the other hand, it had more of its own style, nice compared to the band work than you usually get. There was also a separate scene (the one where Despereaux reads from the book) where the style became a bit more abstract, the film would have been better completely in that style.
There are some hopeful moments in the first half hour, but in the end it is quite flat and easy.
1.5*
Translated from Dutch · View original
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