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Clarence Tsui

Featuring the voices of: Matthew Broderick,  Dustin Hoffman,  Emma Watson,  Tracey Ullman
Directors: Robert Stevenhagen  and Sam Fell
Category: I (English and Cantonese versions)
First we were  inundated by penguins,  now it's  rodents. Just as  March of the Penguins spawned a wave of flipper flicks,  last year's  acclaimed Ratatouille  has been followed up by The Tale of Despereaux, an anthropomorphic animation movie  about civilised rats and mice.
The laws of diminishing returns still apply, however.  Happy Feet and Surf's Up  were inferior  spin-offs from  March of the Penguins; likewise Sam Fell and Robert Stevenhagen's  feel-good  kiddie flick offers neither the wit  nor the warmth   of Ratatouille.
And the filmmakers  invite  comparison  in the film's  opening sequences, in which the first quarter-hour  is spent  introducing Roscuro (voiced by Dustin Hoffman), a rat whose rough appearance belies his affable demeanour and  fine palate.
The  titular character  is introduced only after audiences are treated to Roscuro's ill-fated venture into a royal court, where his appearance in the queen's soup gives her a fatal heart attack, prompting  the  king swiftly to outlaw  both soup and rodents and  plunging Roscuro  into a dark, labyrinthine rat world  beneath the castle, where he  meets Botticelli (Ciaran Hinds),  a  schemer  bent  on  reshaping Roscuro  in his own rotten image.
Roscuro's  unease  is mirrored in the realm of mice  by the  story of Despereaux (above; voiced by Matthew Broderick), whose abnormally big ears are matched only by  his sizeable craving for adventure - a trait much frowned on by his parents and teachers,  who say that one 'doesn't learn to be a mouse if you don't know how to be afraid'.
His taste for excitement  brings about his banishment from  mouse society and thrusts him into  the  world of humans - firstly through Roscuro, who  opens his eyes to  possibilities beyond the underground, and then with Princess Pea (Emma Watson),  dismayed by her grey existence as her father and her country  languish in  endless grief.
Thrown into the mix is Mig (Tracey Ullman), a bumbling, cauliflower-eared servant girl who caves in to her  urges for greater things by  attempting to usurp Pea and become royalty. Her actions are the fulcrum  for each character's rediscovery  of the merits of  being good.  And, of course,  reconciliation  is only a matter of time.
There's nothing wrong with such seasonal  fare but the  film is hardly an example of sharp  storytelling, and the visual gags - such as those involving the narcissistic royal chef (Kevin Kline) and his magic vegetable alter ego, Boldo (Stanley Tucci)  - offer only momentary relief  from the  moralising (Sigourney Weaver's voiceover is  especially grating). There are  small pleasures in Despereaux,  but they're few and far between.
The Tale of Despereaux opens today



The Tale of Despereaux