- Released: November 13, 2022
- Directed by: Toby Genkel, Florian Westermann
- Running time: 1h 33min
- Rating 2.5/5
Synopsis
An intelligent cat named Maurice, together with a band of rat and a boy posing as the Pied Piper, arrives at a town which has no rats and no food. Together with their new ally Malicia they have to solve the riddle of the missing animals and food and stand up to a terrifying villain.My Thoughts
Somehow this is the second review in a row I'm writing of a movie directed by Toby Genkel. The last review I wrote before this one is of Ooops! Noah is Gone. Ah, well. Moving on.
I do think this one is slightly better than Ooops, but this still isn't much to write home about. It's overall a pretty solid movie with a decent mystery going on, and the main villain was pretty badass. But that's kind of most of the compliments I can give it. Aside from that it's pretty bland and average, character-wise, story-wise, animation-wise, etc.
One thing I do have a bit of an issue with is some of the character designs, particularly Maurice himself. His body is pretty okay, but his face is kind of just. Off. It's a very human-like face and when he opens his mouth he has these super tiny human-like teeth too great in number and it just really gives off this uncanny valley effect.
Another thing that annoyed me is that there's a scene where they go out of their way to show that Maurice is scratching some villains, yet his claws leave no scratches behind. What's the point of showing him scratching if it doesn't do any damage, then? I don't need there to be blood and gore, but just have him leave behind some scratches on the villains and it wouldn't look so distracting.
Malicia herself also constantly goes on and on about stories to the
point it's pretty much her only personality trait (aside from being
cocky about her narration). Like, we get it, you don't have to make
literally every line this character has be about stories or books or
tropes or whatever. Your audience, even younger children, isn't stupid.
An occasional reference would be fine, but the constant story-talk of
her just gets so exhausting.
Yet another issue the movie has is that some of its major characters just kind of annoyingly self-confident and cocky. It gets distracting, especially in Maurice and Malicia. Them being so self-confident and always acting like they know better gets really annoying. Especially since Malicia and Maurice are doing the narration of the story, breaking the fourth wall a distracting amount of times.
One more thing I will give the movie credit for is that I do like the rats. They're mostly comic relief characters, but they're still likable and I quite enjoyed their silliness and they were still compelling enough even if they weren't the most well-rounded characters. Honestly I can get behind media that portrays often-maligned animals such as rats (or others such as spiders or snakes or whatever) in a positive light because far too often it's the other way around. So the rats definitely were a highlight of the movie for me.
Overall this is just not a very good movie, but not terrible either. I think if you want to give your children something to watch it's harmless and can be fun for them, but I don't think most adults will be getting anything out of this. Maybe fans of the original Prachett book will like it, but as I haven't read it I really cannot tell how good of an adaptation this is.
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