Yes, I realize that the animated film version of Kate DiCamillo's Newbery Award-winning book The Tale of Despereaux was released a whopping eight months ago in December. But I could never bring myself to go and see it. Why? Well, the trailer scared me. I saw this short preview and became convinced that the movie would never be able to live up to one of my favorite children's books ever; that it would be ruined by an overabundance of goofy humor:
Well, not too long ago I finally saw the movie. And all things considering, it wasn't too bad! The movie itself is rather quirky and fun and if you allow it to stand alone, it's a pretty well put-together piece of children's cinema. And while the movie did a better job than I expected of staying true to the story, there are a few major discrepancies between the movie and the book however that will continue to bother me, namely:
Roscuro's back story is completely changed. In the book, Roscuro is different from the other rats simply because he is different. In the movie, Roscuro is different from the other rats because he's foreign. Perhaps because of this, I never really bought it that Roscuro ever ever really was evil - he was way too nice throughout the whole movie.
But except for the Roscuro problem, most of the changes that were made made a certain amount of sense for creating an exciting and interesting movie. Because let's face it - not all books translate well to the screen, and if you're going to try sometimes changes need to be made to account for the new format. But I will say that at its core, the film version of The Tale of Despereaux stays faithful to the idea that it's OK to be different, and that forgiveness is necessary for overcoming difficult times.
Overall Quality of Film: A-
Overall Faithfulness to the Book: B
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