The Tale of Despereaux (2008)
TOMATOMETER
AUDIENCE SCORE
Critic Consensus: Despite its striking visuals, The Tale of Despereaux as a story feels familiar and unimaginative.
The Tale of Despereaux Videos & Photos
Movie Info
"The Tale of Despereaux" tells the story of several unlikely heroes: Despereaux, a brave mouse banished to the dungeon for speaking with a human; Roscuro, a good-hearted rat who loves light and soup, but is exiled to darkness; Pea, a Princess in a gloomy castle who is prisoner to her father's grief; and Mig, a servant girl who longs to be a Princess, but is forced to serve the jailer. Tiny and graced with oversized ears, Despereaux was born too big for his little world. Refusing to live his life … More
| Rating: | G |
| Genre: | Action & Adventure, Animation, Kids & Family, Comedy |
| Directed By: | Rob Stevenhagen, Sam Fell |
| Written By: | Will McRobb, Chris Viscardi, Gary Ross |
| In Theaters: | Dec 19, 2008 Wide |
| On DVD: | Apr 7, 2009 |
| Box Office: | $50.8M |
| Runtime: |
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Cast
as Despereaux
as Princess Pea
as Roscuro
as Mig
as Botticelli
as Antoinette
as Furlough
as Principal
as Gregory
as Inquisitor
as Boldo
as Andre
as Lester
as Pietro
as Narrator
as Hovis
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LoginCritic Reviews for The Tale of Despereaux
All Critics (108) | Top Critics (31) | Fresh (60) | Rotten (47) | DVD (3)
It just tries to take a little bit from some of the things we've seen over the past few years that have worked to make this work and it's just desperate and it doesn't work.
It's like Ratatouille meets Upstairs Downstairs to go sort of cross-generational but it didn't work really on any level.
Certainly bears a superficial resemblance to Ratatouille, but it's a better film in several ways.
It amounts to less than the sum of its artfully conceived parts but remains a nice and visually interesting film.
To gegonos oti sto eikosalepto mporei na se riksei se bathy ypno, mporei na einai kai to kalytero kamoyflarisma aytoy toy anapanteha anepeisodiakoy ki anyperblita baretoy kinoymenoy ap' ta shediastika grafeia tis Universal Animation, poy den ehei kan to t
The film looks great and the story is interesting enough for adults. It may be a little too complex and intense for young children.
Audience Reviews for The Tale of Despereaux
Good animation, but a boring and unintellegent story. Really not very good, a better tale for a straight to DVD movie.
Super Reviewer
Oh my goodness gracious! They ruined such an amazing story with this movie. I love the book, "The Tale of Desperaux". It was exciting, funny, fresh, and original. You can easily see how much they tried to honor the source material but they easily failed at every chance they got.
The story is about a fearless mouse named Desperaux who has exceptionally large ears and a big taste for adventure. He live in a castle and a has crush on the princess, who is voiced by Emma Watson of "Harry Potter" fame. Thats one of the very few good things about the film. I don't want to give too much away about the story. Read the book for more.
To me, the animation was detailed and good-looking but was unoriginal. Its like they tried to mix Pixar with a Da Vinci painting! The voice acting was decent but not that pleasing. They've could've done a much better job with casting Desperaux. The most annoying thing about the film was Sigourney Weaver's freaking narration! It was poorly written and made me want to perform hari kari on myself.
They did not honor the source material, they raped it! They severely raped a wonderful tale with this. They failed to make it exciting like the book. This is sure to bore children to sleep. They also failed to add intereting humor. What kind of G-Rated animated movie contains no humor? There were like only two jokes in this. None of them made me laugh. I'd rather look at a pile of horse droppings for the entire film's runtime. If you plan to see this, read the book first. If you end up giving this a watch, you'll be saying "Forget this movie! The book was so much better!" when it ends.
It sucks so bad, I could not make it to the end, folks.
Super Reviewer
Though i havent read the book and i still care not to, i have to say the movie was pretty good
Super Reviewer
The Tale of Despereaux Quotes
| Despereaux: | No... I'm a gentlemen. |
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