Tale of Despereaux Animation
Billing itself as the 'story of a mouse, a princess, some soup and a spool of thread', Universal Studios' Tale of Despereaux is an animated feel-good flick about overcoming obstacles to achieve bold dreams against all odds.
The movie, directed by Sam Fell and Rob Stevenhagen, is adapted from a 2003 children's book of the same name by American author Kate DiCamillo. It tells the story of Despereaux (voice of Matthew Broderick), a tiny mouse with oversized ears and the heart of a hero.
Despereaux - his name means 'despair' - lives in hard times. A rat falls into the Queen's bowl of soup. She has a heart attack and dies. The angry king outlaws soup and banishes all rats to the castle's basement dungeon.
Despereaux, meanwhile, falls in love with a princess called Pea (voice by Emma Watson), who teaches him to read books, not eat them.
This infuriates the mouse community, which is suspicious of humans. The mice banish Despereaux to the dungeon, which is full of rats.