The Tale of Despereaux
The Tale of Despereaux takes us to a mythical kingdom where soup is king until the king outlaws soup. That’s because his queen dies tragically in a soup related incident precipitated by a rat named Roscuro ( Dustin Hoffman) who then makes his escape to the subterranean world of Rat Town where the evil Mayor (Frank Langella) is bent on manipulating Roscuro into conforming to the rat stereotype by shedding his love of sunlight and fine food. Close by is the subterranean mouse world is another nonconformist to his cowering and scurrying species, the lop eared Despereaux (Matthew Broderick) who prefers reading books rather than eating them. Although this give Despereaux Don Quixote like delusions, together these unorthodox rodents join forces to get the kingdom out of its unexplained spate of inclement weather and bring about an end to soup prohibition. The advances in computer generated imaging are evident here as the animation is stunning but even though adapted from a decorated children’s book and with a half hearted attempt at a message of forgiveness, nothing boosts the quality of the faulty story line. This is not particularly entertaining for adults and probably a little scary for some kids. One hard of hearing character with downs syndrome features being duped into an act of terrorism is borderline uncomfortable. Despereaux seems desperate to be another Ratatouille but it’s just not as tasty.