Susan GrahamMovie Review: The Tale of Despereaux
January 1st 2009 21:56
I give it two stars out of five
I suppose you can't blame the movie makers except in the fact that they tried to make a movie for this book in the first place. At first glance, the story would appear to be very adaptable into movie form: a heroic mouse goes on a quest to rescue a grieving princess. It's a unique twist on the classic knight's tale. But the story is much more complicated than that, and it was simply impossible to translate the backstory and character development onto the screen.
The result was an extremely confusing mess of a movie. I was even confused, and I had already read the book. I can only imagine how my kids felt as they watched rats cheer for the impending death of the mouse Despereaux in a Gladiator-style arena. Or when the chef's alter ego in the form of a vegetable man decides to help Despereaux rescue the princess. There were times when I wished I had the book with me for reference because I certainly don't remember reading about these scenes in the original story.
It would have been fine if the movie makers took some creative license with the original tale as long as their changes made sense. But unfortunately, the audience was left wondering throughout much of the movie.
I get tired of critics defending bad movies by talking about the incredible animation. Sure, the movie was visually appealing. In today's technological world, would you really expect less? Great computer graphics is no excuse for a poor scipt. When will movie studios learn to spend less on the computer geeks and more on the writers?
I won't even waste time talking about the big-name actors in the movie because they were simply doing their jobs despite the movie's shortfalls.
Oh well, I suppose you can't win 'em all. I had high hopes for Despereaux after the success of the book. But it turns out we shouldn't have wasted our time and money.
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