The Tale of Despereaux
Short description
The Tale of Despereaux is an animated adventure set in the kingdom of Dor, whose joy has faded after a tragedy befalls the royal family and the princess loses her spirit. Into this gloom is born Despereaux Tilling, a tiny mouse with unusually large ears who prefers reading books to eating them. His refusal to live by the fearful rules of his fellow mice leads to his banishment, and he sets out to rescue Princess Pea. His path crosses that of Roscuro, a rat from the castle dungeons, and Miggery Sow, a servant girl. Together these three unlikely heroes become entangled in the princess's fate and in the effort to restore light to the kingdom.
The film was directed by Robert Stevenhagen and Sam Fell, following Fell's Flushed Away, with a screenplay by Gary Ross, who produced alongside Allison Thomas. The voice cast includes Matthew Broderick as Despereaux, Dustin Hoffman as Roscuro, Emma Watson as Princess Pea, Tracey Ullman as Miggery Sow, Kevin Kline as Chef Andre and Sigourney Weaver as the narrator. Made for 60 million US dollars, it took 87 million worldwide, a modest return for an animated release.
On IMDb the film holds 6.1 out of 10 from more than 39,000 votes, while on TMDB it stands at 6.2 from just over a thousand ratings. A critics' score of 5.7 from 112 reviews places it close to those audience figures, indicating a generally mild reception across all three measures.
What's left behind the scenes
- Justin Long was originally intended to voice Despereaux, but the role was later given to Matthew Broderick.
- In the scene where André and Boldo, voiced by Kevin Kline and Stanley Tucci, throw everything they can find at each other, Kline and Tucci also threw things at each other while delivering their lines and improvising, varying their degree of annoyance and anger with each other as directed by screenwriter and producer Gary Ross.
- Initially, Sylvain Chomet was slated to direct, but Sam Fell eventually took the director's chair. Chomet later stated that the studio executives found his ideas regarding the characters and future merchandise too dark.
- The names of some characters are related to the world of art. Roskuro, for example, comes from “chiaroscuro,” meaning light-shadow; Botticelli is a reference to the painter Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), one of the masters of the early Italian Renaissance, and Boldo is named after the painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593), whose work some saw as anticipating surrealism, and who created faces and human figures from fruits and various objects in the same way Boldo composed them from fruits, vegetables, and kitchen utensils.
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