In the Medieval Kingdom of Dor, there are some men on a ship. The most important one is the sailor, Pietro. He has a rat companion named Roscuro.

Unfortunately, the rats are generally looked at in a bad light. Roscuro and his rat pals emphasize that.

For the humans, there is a major soup festival about to happen. It is called “Royal Soup Day.” It is when the citizens are invited into the castle to enjoy a soup banquet with the king, queen, and princess.

However, Roscuro accidentally ends up inside a soup bowl. And it’s none other than the soup for the queen.

The queen starts panicking and freaking out. Sadly, it leads to her demise.

The Kingdom of Dor is now in complete mourning – especially the king and Princess Pea.

The king banned soup and rats completely. Even though Princess Pea also feels sad, she does miss the energy of the kingdom and feels quite isolated.

Meanwhile, in a village of mice, a new mouse baby is born. His name is Despereaux.

But Despereaux grows up very differently from the other mice. The biggest difference is that he is brave and curious rather than scared.

When Despereaux attends school, the teacher shows pictures to the kids of what’s good and what’s bad. When she shows a picture of a knife, all the kids scream and crouch under their desks.

But Despereaux remains up and smiling. The teacher tries to warn him that the knife is dangerous to mice. Yet it doesn’t change him.

No matter how many times the other mice teach Despereaux to be like them as “proper mice,” it won’t work.

Sometime later, Despereaux meets Princess Pea. He tries to finish her story about her life so far – except that speaking to people violate mouse laws. Not surprisingly, Despereaux gets in trouble for it.

However, at some point, Princess Pea is actually kidnapped. Despereaux wants to help save her. But can he succeed without getting into trouble again?

I’ve seen the trailer for this film many times when I was a kid. Although I never saw it in the theaters. I was excited about Emma Watson doing the voice of the princess. After all, back in 2008, she was still playing Hermione in the Harry Potter movies.

When I watched this movie recently, the beginning seemed okay. Unfortunately, it went in a direction that ended up not pleasing me as much as I hoped.

For instance, much of the beginning was focused on the rat, Roscuro. It wasn’t until at least 15 or 20 minutes later. that Despereaux was finally introduced.

If the story is about him, then he should have been introduced earlier on – preferrably right in the beginning.

Despite being excited about Emma Watson voice acting in this movie, I ended up not being fond of her voice for Princess Pea. It felt kind of awkward and out of place for a princess (no offense to Miss Watson, even though she is unlikely ever going to read this).

On the bright side, I did admire the Queen’s reaction to a rat in her soup. I think it was very believable and relatable.

But overall, The Tale of Despereaux did not exactly work out for me. There was very little that I actually liked in this movie.

I give it 2.5 out of 5 stars.