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The Tale of Despereaux
The Tale of Despereaux Image
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Metascore
53 out of 100

Mixed or average reviews - based on 25 Critics What's this?

User Score
5.5 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 26 Ratings

Your Score
10 out of 10
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  • Starring: Dustin Hoffman, Emma Watson, Matthew Broderick
  • Summary: Once upon a time, in the faraway kingdom of Dor, there was magic in the air, raucous laughter aplenty and gallons of mouth-watering soup. But a terrible accident left the king broken-hearted, the princess filled with longing and the townsfolk despondent. All hope was lost in a land where sunlight disappeared and the world became dreary gray. Until Despereaux Tilling was born... (Universal)… Expand
  • Director: Robert Stevenhagen
  • Genre(s): Adventure, Fantasy, Comedy, Animation, Family
  • Rating: G
  • Runtime: 93 min
  • More Details and Credits »

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 25
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 25
  3. Negative: 3 out of 25
  1. TV Guide
    Reviewed by: Tracie Cooper
    88
    A perfect fairytale, adhering to The Princess Bride's standards of fighting, fencing, torture, and true love, without the ham-fisted moral element of so many of its fairy-tale predecessors.
  2. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Michael Rechtshaffen
    60
    The flatly generic results certainly appear at odds with the picture's stirring visual style, which pays homage to the great Flemish artists.
  3. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    30
    The lesson learned from The Tale of Despereaux is that an overabundance of vocal talent does not a good cartoon make.

See all 25 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

Write a Review
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 12 out of 19
  2. Mixed: 1 out of 19
  3. Negative: 6 out of 19
  1. AdamB
    9
    Great Movie! So cute. Great Music. Very original.
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  2. TimoV.
    5
    A food loving rat ends up messing around in the kitchen with a soup, which unleashes a mayhem like never seen before. Sounds familiar, a bit like Ratatouille? Well, it's not. The Tale of Despereaux has some very beautiful passages to it, some wonderful artwork, but the animation sucks and the story is a bit too fractured to really work for this type of a film.… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes
  3. MichaelF.
    3
    This tale is long in duration but short in plot, action, humor, character development, and everything else that makes an animated movie good. The bad guy, a rat, is recycled, part and parcel, from the critic in Ratatouille - I think they took the same CGI model and made it a rat. I was so disappointed - the premise had so much potential, but the follow-through was flat and utterly uninspiring.… Expand
    • 0 of 0 users said yes

See all 19 User Reviews

Trailers

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