The Tale of Despereaux (12/21 matinee) ** 1/2

James: ***I liked it. You know what the meanest part was? When the Princess said to Meg, "You look ridiculous. You look ridiculous."

Jupiter: * I didn't like it. I didn't like when the queen died.

Justice: (In the movie theatre) I want to go. I don't like this movie. I want to go.

Grandma Pat: *** I give it more stars for the graphics. The details on the fabrics and the cloth were amazing. But I just don't get this loving rats and mice thing. I thought the scenes with the racing rats descending on the food were really...gross. There was only one rat that you could really care about and it was Dustin Hoffman. The rest of them were really gross. I found it interesting that the princess's hero was an itty-bitty mouse. He embodied what a knight should be, but he could barely fit on the palm of her hand.

Mama: *** Lovely animation, a fairy tale world, and a theme that ill-treatment leads one to treat others poorly, this was a sweet--if uninteresting--movie. The textures were often lush and Desperaux the mouse was cute and full of heart. And it's always fun to see how mice and rats use the discarded items of our world, forks and buttons etc. to build their little cities. I also liked the way mice were expected to have an inherited identity that demanded they scurry and cower. "There's so many things in this world to be afraid of," his principal says to Desperaux. "You just need to find them." Funny though, how the mouse, to be heroic, must rise above his culture, and the rat, to be civilized, must rise above rat culture. The humans on the other hand--their flawed hierarchal, misogynistic fairy tale culture is never called into question. In fact, the happy ending for Miggery Sow was to embrace her lower station.
The thing is, Mr. Reedy is reading this book to James and his class, and for two weeks James has been coming home every day narrating to me what happened to Desperaux today. I was honestly expecting something a little darker, with the one-eared rat teaching Despereaux to be a torturer, because he'd been tortured himself. I've been curious how the mouse James has been telling me about turns out to be the cute hero on the front of the movie posters. When we got home from the movie James asked me, "But where was the one-eared rat?" I think he was expecting a rated PG movie and Despereaux the mouse had the P taken out of him.
This worked just fine as something to do on a cold, rainy day during Winter Break.