I took the princesses to see The Tale of Despereaux.
Remember that CoCo is 11, LuLu is 9 and MiMi is almost 5. Each of us can award a Diamond to the movie in this review process.
It also bears noting that we've read the book so our review may be entirely off the mark for those of you who haven't.
In summary, the movie is the tale of a smaller-than-average mouse with very large ears who basically never fits into the "cower and scurry" lifestyle of his mouse community. He is extremely brave, creative, curious and all together un-mouselike. All of these attributes converge to put him in the path of the kingdom's only princess, Pea. Their odd relationship drives the story as they and their friends are tested in dramatic ways.
Each of us liked portions of the movie very much. For MiMi the best scene was an affectionate reunion between a cook and his soup genie. The soup genie is a highlight. He is made of vegetables and cookery. He is a visual feast. Ha. I digress.
In fact, visually speaking, Despereaux is perfect. The beautiful animation (in combination with CGI) is extremely satisfying. What the story lacks (and this movie is lacking in story) is made up for in the aestethic sensibilities of the medium and art direction.
However, as I alluded earlier, this story is vastly different than the book and scrubbed clean of some of it's more nuanced delightfulness. Despereaux's mother in the book is borish but in the movie is almost likable. The betrayal of his brother is completely left behind. Some of the emotional richness of the book is missing. And frankly, we missed it.
And so we give this movie 
Two diamonds out of four. Good enough to see, but you really should read the four diamond book. Click the widget on the side to order it from Amazon.
We're looking for a good family movie to see over Christmas break and we may just have to check this one out. Thanks for the review.
Have a wonderful Christmas and keep up the great job of your daily posts. What's gotten in to us?
Posted by: Lynette3boys | December 24, 2008 at 08:37 AM