nice, charming, sweet. a fairy - tale from old and precise recipes. a delight. and seed of special joy. because the princess, the sad kingdom, the silky moral lesson are at perfect place. but, more important, the hero is magnificent. and very special. a family film. or just a form of magic in the era of blockbusters. a beautiful work in which each detail is important. because it is a story about old fashion virtues - courage, truth, honor, honesty. and respect for duty. and a new mouse in middle of action is not bad thing. maybe for be conscience for a sad rat. and Charming Prince for a young girl. and model for public. because message is simple - the identity is more important than voice of majority. always.

After seeing the cute large eared mouse I thought it would be a great movie to watch. It only disappointed me at the end. The plot is rather naive and dull. There is a tremendous flaw in the character of Despereaux. With his two cute looking large ears but a thick dull masculine voice Despereaux has quite failed to attract any attention at all. The other two characters - the rat and the peasant girl were simply mediocre type. One thing I failed to understand is that why they named the movie 'Tale of Despereaux'. This movie contains three parallel stories of three characters actually. At the end of the day, I think they have messed up everything in the movie. There are so many outstanding animation movies and this movie doesn't worth watching.The animation works were pretty good. Therefore I'm giving it 4 stars actually. Otherwise it deserves none.

It's sad that movie producers don't make this kind of movie anymore. This is a classic, wonderful fairy tale that is good for the whole family. It does have a few flaws such as this movie is too dark for a G-rating. But the movie itself works and it's not boring like many people say it to be.This is about a mouse who is different from the rest of the mice. After being kicked out of this tribe, he befriends a rat and together they must save a kingdom from darkness.This movie has an impressive voice cast. Matthew Broderick does a good job playing the hero mouse.The animation is pretty good. It looked like the animation was drawn. I liked it though. It reminds me of old Disney movies. In fact, this has a great moral like the rest. I liked this film a lot. I rate this film 8/10.

As a few people know already I am a huge fan of animation, and would immediately see something no matter how good or bad it was. I was interested in The Tale of Despereux, it actually looked interesting, and naturally I wanted to see how much justice it did to one of my favourite books, written by Kate DiCamillo.I have to say, The Tale of Despereux was a bit of a disappointment. Not terrible, but it could have been better, considering the source material. I have to admit though, the animation is wonderful. I admit I was more impressed by the backgrounds and colours than the character designs, the character designs were good in general but the backgrounds were nicely rendered and the colours were suitably bold and bright. Also the music is beautiful, it had lovely motifs and a sense of adventure, and the message was a nice one. And I was surprised at the voice acting, it was very good on the whole. Initially, I wasn't sure of some of the choices, but all did well. Emma Watson is good enough, but Dustin Hoffmann, Kevin Kline and Robbie Coltrane are great. Wasn't sure about Matthew Broderick though. He can be likable and above average, but he flounders when his characters are badly underwritten or poorly explored, which was sadly the case here.I think I would have had a better reaction to The Tale of Despereux if I hadn't read the book. I do try to judge films by their own merits, but for those who haven't read the book or are considering reading it, I want to share my opinion. It is a wonderful book, full of memorable characters, exciting and poignant stories, a great atmosphere and a full emotional punch at the end. On its own, this film is reasonable, as an adaptation it is sadly quite poor. Some of the characters are poorly explored, particularly Despereux who is disappointingly bland, while Roscuro doesn't come close to the complex character he is in the book. The story is a bit of a mess, it had a great idea, but some of it felt rushed and skimmed over, while scenes were unfocused and pointless. I really wasn't taken with the subplot about soup, sorry but that felt somewhat superfluous to the story. Worse was the script, the actors delivered very well but some of the dialogue is pretty bad, instead of being intelligent, funny, poignant or thought-provoking, it came across as trite and hackneyed.Overall, reasonable attempt but doesn't quite work. Oh, and for those who haven't read the book and weren't taken with the movie, you may find the book is much more worthwhile. 5/10 for the animation, voice cast and music. Bethany Cox