Mouse fantasy just squeaks by

There's a fitting aura of gloom and despair around The Tale of Despereaux, a no-frills fairytale about a mouse with large ears and an even larger heart, who finds redemption in a kingdom of darkness.

Although the artfully rendered computer-generated animation is lovely, the less-than-enchanting scripting is another story.
In making the leap to the big screen from Kate DiCamillo's Newbery Medal-winning 2003 novel The Tale of Despereaux: Being the Story of a Mouse, a Princess, Some Soup and a Spool of Thread, a considerable amount of magic and charm appear to have gotten lost.

No fresh fare

What remains — particularly the rodent and the soup part — can't help but invite comparisons to Ratatouille, though not in a favourable way.

Given the absence of fresh animated fare, families may still initially take the bait. However, the movie's murkier recesses could prove too intense for kids.

Co-directed by Sam Fell, who went the rat route with the entertaining Flushed Away, and first-timer Rob Stevenhagen, the film centres on Despereaux Tilling (Matthew Broderick), a brave mouse whose un-mouse-like behaviour — he's known to converse with humans and prefers to read books rather than eat them — lands him in trouble.

He's banished from Mouseworld and sent to the much darker Ratworld, presided over by the sinister Botticelli (Ciaran Hinds).

He's taught the ropes by another recent arrival, Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman), a Ratso Rizzo sort of rat, while finding himself smitten with the fair, human Princess Pea (Emma Watson), who's a prisoner in her father's grim castle.

Up but not the tops

Despereaux rises to those heroic heights but the film, strangely, never follows suit. Screenwriter Gary Ross has done well with underdogs (Seabiscuit and Dave) but in this film it's as if he and co-directors Fell and Stevenhagen cut off the tale with a carving knife.

The transitions between the parallel Despereaux and Roscuro stories are choppy while the rest of the characters never feel developed, despite an all-star voice cast, which includes Tracey Ullman, Kevin Kline, William H. Macy and Frank Langella, and a detached narration by Sigourney Weaver.

The generic results appear at odds with the film's stirring visual style, which pays homage to the great Flemish artists while lending a remarkable warmth missing in most computer-generated animation.