The Tale of Despereaux
A brave little mouse learns to read and loves the fairy tale he finds in the world around him that he must bring to a conclusion.
Film making 18/25
Cinematography 18/25
Audio 19/25
Bonus Features 12/25
Total 67/100
Worlds collide in The Tale of Despereaux when a little mouse finds the courage to save a Princess and bring happiness to a kingdom and its ruler. Dor is a fine country that has a fun and festive celebration called Royal Soup Day held once a year.
Roscuro, voiced by Dustin Hoffman, is a rat who travels with his human companion to Dor for the festival but starts a series of events that will plague the kingdom for years. The head chef, Andre played by Kevin Kline, is arguing with his soup genie, named Baldo played by Stanley Tucci, who is made out of various fruits and vegetables about the final ingredients for the soup.
Roscuro is intent on following the smell of the wonderful soup that the whole kingdom is waiting for and runs into the royal dining room to get a closer view. He falls off the chandelier he is hanging from into the soup right in front of the Queen, giving her a heart attack.
Roscuro is chased out of the hall and the King swears to never have soup again and banishes all rats from the kingdom. Rats were friends of people as were mice but now the mice have gone into hiding while the rats are keeping to the deep dungeons. A storm cloud decends on the kingdom but does not give up any rain bringing perpetual gloom to the lands of Dor.
Years later a small mouse is born named Despereaux, played by Matthew Broderick, who has large ears but his bravery and courage make him more unique than his ears. Despereaux and his brother are eating a book one day when Despereaux decides to read it instead of consume it and discovers a wonderful tale of princesses, heroes and dragons.
He returns to the room and reads more stories but is soon discovered and turned into the Mouse Council for not acting like a mouse. He talks with a human, Princess Pea played by Emma Watson, and tells her of the story he is reading and promises to return to her to tell how the story ends when he finishes reading it.
One law in the mouse village is they cannot interact with humans and must always hide from them so Despereaux has broken a law and endangered all mice. Rather than being fearful and timid he has shown bravery and cannot be trusted to hide with the other mice so they banish him to the dungeon with the rats.
He is lowered into the dungeon by the Threadmaster, Hovis played by Christopher Lloyd and discovered by rats who are led by Botticelli. Despereaux is thrown into an arena to be eaten by a chained cat for the other rats entertainment but Roscuro intervenes and takes Despereaux home to eat him.
Botticelli has been trying to make Roscuro more like the rest of the rats, cutthroat villains and not caring about anything other than themselves but he doesn’t act like it. Roscuro has hidden himself away and rarely mingles with the other rats, not liking the games they play of terrifying the mice they capture and eating them.
Roscuro tells Botticelli he will eat Despereaux and Botticelli is thrilled that Roscuro may be shaping up into a fine rat after all. Roscuro takes Despereaux to his home and shows him a hidden spot where sunlight streams into his small cavern and brightens one small part of his world.
Despereaux tells Roscuro of his meeting with the Princess and how she wants to see the sun again and bring back the rats and eat soup. Roscuro’s guilt overcomes him and he tells Despereaux about the incident that caused the King to banish the rats and the kingdom to fall into hard times.
Roscuro tries to apologize to the Princess but she screams and chases him away and Roscuro finds a young servant girl named Miggery who used to be a farm girl. Miggery wishes to be a Princess and dreams of wearing the fine clothes but she is only a former farm girl who tended the pigs and now serves the Princess.
Roscuro promises to Miggery that she can become a Princess by hiding the real Princess in the dungeon and Roscuro now becomes a hero to the rats. Despereaux tries to go back to the mouse village but they think he is a ghost so he finds the chef who in a fit of desperation has begun to make soup again.
Despereaux reveals himself to Andre and Boldo and the genie and Despereaux go to rescue the Princess while Andre stays behind to finish his soup. Despereaux goes to the Rat world but Boldo is wounded and ends up falling to pieces and dying in their fight toward the rat world.
Despereaux makes his way to the Princess when she is being threatened by the rats in the arena just before they eat her but Roscuro sees she is really sorry for being afraid of him. Before the rats can eat her Despereaux releases the cat from his cage and the cat chases after all the rats who end up fleeing with Botticelli being chased by the cat into the cage.
Despereaux has saved the Princess with the help of Roscuro and they take her back up to the delicious smell of soup cooking. The sun that had been covered in gray clouds now peaks out over the kingdom to bring happiness and great soup to everyone.
Despereaux is a fun tale and one that I think is well worth watching for kids and adults even though it did get mixed reviews when it released in theatres. A true tale of heroes and villains with plenty of action and adventure is hard to come by and the hero of this tale is not only brave but cute.
Despereaux is a fun movie and very well made with plenty of songs and action that will be fun to watch and enjoyed by all. I found the movie a great fairy tale with a happy ending that did not follow the same old story lines but it did get a little muddled near the end.
The Blu-ray edition of The Tale of Despereaux contains a making of feature, deleted songs, Top Ten Uses for Oversized Ears feature and a make your own soup game. The added features give a little extra to the film with a couple that are silly fun more for and kids and the making of is a fairly decent addition.
The extras are nice but not really enough to make buying the Blu-ray edition worthwhile unless you are getting it for the high definition quality. The film is a good one and I think worth purchasing you just want to go with the DVD version as the Blu-ray does not contain a lot of bonus content.