Tale of Despereaux

[eastofthemoon]

The other day I saw the Tale of Despereaux with gullwhacker Bolt is still my favorite holiday movie so far, but Tale of Despereaux was cute and comes in a close second. I''ll probably buy it when it comes onto DVD.

The animation was really good, especially the ones for the storybook scenes. I found myself getting attached to the characters, especially Despereaux (best knight ever) and it had a nice fairy tale kind of feeling for the story.

There was one interesting bit about the movie that didn't hit me until I was chatting with Stu about it afterward. The movie doesn't have any one liners, it had good lines, but no onliners, you know a joke or gag they over play in trailers for movies.

I find they're doing that for a lot of animated movies these days. However, I don't remember any for The Tale of Despereaux and I got to say that it's rather refreshing to see that. I should be enjoying a movie for the story and characters, not the gags or sarcastic comments.

Anyway, in my opinion it was a good movie to see.

Comments

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

The movie doesn't have any one liners...

This alone is why I really don't care for Dreamworks movies. They spend too much time trying to be 'hip' and current with the humor, but it just ruins the movie for me. (What's scary to me is that the 'ridonkulous' used in Bolt is actually slang in the eastern part of the U.S. I'd never heard of it until I saw the movie, though, so I guess in the case of the movie they were trying to imbue the local pigeons with local slang which actually worked for me. I love the Californian pigeons!)

I hope to see this movie sometime. Heck, I just got free movie tickets from work, so maybe if I ever have a day off I'll do so.

[earthstar-moon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I don't like it when they fill it with pop culture references and gags all the way through. Dreamworks has been doing that far too much, along with one or two other companies (Hunting Season comes to mind). I think Sherk is to blame for that, since it was a comedy so they must figure that putting in as many jokes as they can will bring in the audience.

However, too much of anything is not a good thing, I mean a joke is good here and there, but that's not the reason I'm seeing the movie.

I do think you'll like Despereaux, he is the cutest knight ever and I think you'll enjoy the chef's partner, he wasn't in it very much but he was awesome. I can't say anymore without spoiling you. ^_~

[ichiban-victory.livejournal.com]

Oh gosh, that Open Season movie with the bear and the buck? I finally saw it a few weeks ago and it was....oh man, was it pain. It had some nice parts (the ranger and the bear's relationship), but overall I wanted to punt that stupid buck....and gosh, why do people have to make animals walk like people??? A talking deer is easy to believe in my silly human mind, but when it starts to walk and make gestures like a person...

Gah, when I saw Madagascar it just frustrated the heck out of me, too. If you're going to have animals walk and talk (and even have attitudes!) like people, why not just...I don't know, animate people?

Note: Movies like The Rescuers or The Great Mouse Detective avoid this problem since they put clothing on the animals, thus clueing in the audience that these are little people. (And in the sense of Ratigan, it made him all the more frightening when he lost his 'human' self to his rat nature. Feral to the extreme!)

As far as jokes and things go, sometimes it's the unsaid that's more funny than the said. Lion King, for example, during the Hakuna Matata number. When I first saw it and Pumbaa sang, "And I got so downhearted, every time that I-" and Timon instantly clapped a hand over Pumbaa's mouth and destroyed the fourth wall a bit BUT it was hilarious because everybody knew what Pumbaa was going to say, but Timon's stopping him to keep kids from repeating that word was just awesome. Things like that will probably still be funny for decades to come since all kids go through a phase where they repeat all words pertaining to potty humor. Some pop culture won't be as prevalent as it is now, so jokes based on it will fall flat for future viewers.

I will see Despereaux one of these days. If for nothing else, I want to see the animation! The art grabbed me the moment I saw the trailer so many months ago.