BEFORE: Over the hump on Fuzzy Talking Animal Caper week - mice + rats again tonight. And linking's a snap since William H. Macy's voice carries over from last night - I don't even need to point out that Eric Idle co-starred in "Nuns on the Run" with Robbie Coltrane, born 3/30/1950, the recipient of tonight's birthday SHOUT-out.
THE PLOT: The tale of a misfit mouse who prefers reading books to eating them, an unhappy rat who schemes to leave the darkness of the dungeon, and a bumbling servant girl - whose fates are intertwined with that of the castle's princess.
AFTER: This animated film was based on a children's book, so it's hard for me to nitpick on plot details, without knowing much about the original source material. Plus, these animated kid-friendly films sort of exist in their own fantasy worlds, which are often not subject to regular real-life rules, or typical movie rules for that matter.
As with "Alvin + The Chipmunks 2", the film starts off with an accident - a rat falls into a queen's bowl of soup, in a land where soup-making is some kind of national holiday. (Right. Have they tried barbecue? It generally kicks soup's ass.) This accident (and what follows) leads to the banning of soup. And rats. And sunshine and good feelings, for that matter.
Despereaux is an unlikely hero, the tiniest mouse of all, who breaks a few of the mouse rules and is forced to leave Mouseworld (which seems to be in an unused part of the castle? Not sure.) He's banished to the dungeon, which coincidentally also is the location of Ratworld, but since he read about noble knights, he knows how to act nobly and start to put things right.
I guess you have to think like a kid, I might be too logical for this one. I kept looking for the WHYs, expecting things to progress in a sensible manner. But it's a little too freeform as plots go - except where everything ties in together, and all that happens just a bit too neatly.
There's a roaming "soup spirit" that inspires the chef - he's made up of floating vegetables. That was just extra bizarre. Parts with the chef making soup seemed a little too close to "Ratatouille", also. Also some similarities to the film "Flushed Away" since so much takes place underground.
Also starring the voices of Matthew Broderick (last seen in "The Cable Guy"), Dustin Hoffman (last seen in "Kramer vs. Kramer"), Emma Watson (last seen in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince"), Tracy Ullman, Kevin Kline (last seen in "The Ice Storm"), Stanley Tucci (last seen in "Jury Duty"), Frank Langella (last seen in "The Ninth Gate"), Richard Jenkins (last seen in "Stealing Harvard"), Frances Conroy, Christopher Lloyd (last seen in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest") and Sigourney Weaver (last seen in "Avatar").
RATING: 5 out of 10 mousetraps
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