Did You Know? - Fun Facts About "Finding Nemo"

Welcome to another edition of a series that I like to call Did You Know?. Inspired a little by the Nostalgia Critic's "What You Never Knew" series, this series will allow me to share with you some interesting tidbits, behind-the-scenes information, and fun facts about an animated movie or TV series. Because I like sharing new information with people.

Let's talk about Finding Nemo.

Finding Nemo is one of PIXAR's most iconic films. It was a massive success at the box office, was beloved by critics, and won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. I don't know what it was about the movie that made people flip out. But it's certainly one of PIXAR's best, and if you haven't seen it yet, I would recommend doing so right now (oh, and thanks for crawling out from under that rock to read my blog).

Why was the film such a big hit? Many assumed it was because people just really, really liked fish, and started making their own animated movies about fish in a desperate attempt to cash in (which is how we got Shark Tale). If you ask me, though, I think it was a combination of things - likeable characters, funny jokes, great animation, and just the right amount of sentiment and sincerity. But what do I know?

There's a lot of interesting facts that I'd like to share with you about this movie. You probably already know that the film's writer is also the voice of Mr. Ray. We already talked about the planned direct-to-video sequel that Disney was going to make without PIXAR but didn't get off the ground. And I don't need to tell you that Nemo makes a few cameos in Monsters Inc. But did you know any of THESE things?

NOTE: This post is long. I would recommend getting a snack. Unless it's fish sticks, that just feels wrong to eat when you're reading this (for obvious reasons).

1) Usually, when a PIXAR movie is first thought up, the story treatment is written AFTER the film is greenlit. But in the case of Finding Nemo, Andrew Stanton already had a script completed BEFORE the film was greenlit.

Concept art featuring Nemo.

John Lasseter said, "I remember when we were working on A Bug’s Life, Andrew had this great little drawing that he did over his desk which showed two small fish swimming alongside a giant whale. And I always liked that. He told me it was something he was thinking about but I didn’t hear anything more about it until the pitch. I’ve been a scuba diver since 1980 and I just love the underwater world. When he pitched this idea, I knew that it was going to be amazing in our medium. We always pride ourselves at Pixar on matching the subject matter of our movies with the medium. I really did know when he said ‘fish’ and ‘underwater’ that this film was going to be great."

2) How did Andrew come up with the film? It was a number of things, really. One of them was a 1992 visit to Marine World that got him thinking about the possibilities of recreating the undersea world in computer animation. Another was memories he had of a fish tank in a dentist's office and wondering if the fish inside would ever try to escape back to the ocean. And another was his relationship with his son - he was acting particularly overprotective on a trip to the park and "became obsessed with this premise that fear can deny a good father from being one".

Andrew said, "Telling a story where the protagonist is the father got me excited. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an animated film from that perspective. It made me interested in wanting to write it because I knew I could tell that story. I also thought that the ocean was a great metaphor for life. It’s the scariest, most intriguing place in the world because anything can be out there. And that can be a bad thing or a good thing. I loved playing with that issue and having a father whose own fears of life impede his parenting abilities. He has to overcome that issue just to become a better father. And having him in the middle of the ocean where he has to confront everything he never wanted to face in life seemed like a great opportunity for fun and still allowed us to delve into some slightly deeper issues."

More concept art.

3) A lot of research was done by the animators working on the film. They visited aquariums, went diving in Monterey and Hawaii, studied the fish in a tank at PIXAR, and even attended in-house lectures from an ichthyologist. They also rewatched animated Disney movies that had underwater scenes in them, such as Pinocchio, The Sword in the Stone, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and The Little Mermaid. But the one Disney film that inspired them the most was one that didn't take place underwater at all - Bambi. According to Andrew Stanton, "We kept coming back to Bambi because of the way the filmmakers adhered to the real nature of how these animals moved and what their motor skills were. They used that as the basis for getting as much expression, activity and appeal. We wanted our characters to work in that same way. We thought of it as Bambi underwater."

4) Jess Harnell mentioned in a video on YouTube that he read for Crush before Andrew Stanton decided to voice the character. He recorded all of Crush's dialogue while laying back on a sofa in Lee Unkrich's office. In addition to Crush, Andrew Stanton also voiced the lobster who tells his friends about Marlin's journey (he has a Massachusets accent because there are a lot of lobsters in New England) and some of the Seagulls.

Before Jess, however, PIXAR's initial choice for Crush might have been, believe it or not, Sean Penn. They did an animation test of Crush speaking in Sean Penn's voice (kind of like that animation test they did of Buzz Lightyear speaking in Billy Crystal's voice).

Concept art of Nemo's Dad... I mean, Marlin.

5) To animate the characters' expressions, the film's animators studied... dogs. Yes, dogs. Fish don't have as big a range of facial expressions. Speaking of dogs, they also wanted Bubbles (the yellow fish in the tank who's obsessed with bubbles) to be like a puppy dog.

6) Dory was originally going to be a male character. Then Andrew Stanton watched an episode of Ellen and realized that Ellen DeGeneres was perfect for the role. The intent was for Dory to be a surrogate child for Marlin, someone he could work out his parenting troubles on.

In turn, Gill is intended to be sort of a surrogate father for Nemo. He was originally going to be the anti-Marlin, the sort of father that Nemo would love to have eventually realize that Marlin was better. In fact, they were originally going to have Gill tell Nemo about his life in the ocean, only for Nemo to eventually find out that Gill is a liar who took all of this from a storybook in the dentist's office waiting room. This was cut because otherwise the audience would probably hate Gill for being a lying liar from Liarsburg.

Concept art for the sharks.

7) Why is the fish tank where Nemo winds up in a dentist's office? According to the filmmakers, it just seemed like a good place for potential gags and "odd juxtapositions of things" - having it be in a kid's room or an apartment would've been a bit too obvious. When crafting the personalities of the fish in the tank, they liked the idea of it sort of being like a Loony Bin, and rewatched films like One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest to get ideas. Bob Peterson also reached out to his hygienist to make sure the steps of the root canal that Dr. Sherman performs on somebody were correct.

8) Here's another fun fact about the dentist - when he goes to the bathroom, he doesn't wash his hands. Reminder: he is a DENTIST.

9) Bruce was named after the great white shark from Jaws - I haven't actually seen Jaws, so I don't know if the shark's name is ever mentioned in the movie, but the shark models they used were all named "Bruce" after Steven Spielberg's lawyer, Bruce Raymer.

There's also a theory online that Bruce is actually the son of the shark from Jaws. No, really. Look it up.

More concept art.

10) According to supervising animator Dylan Brown, "Each film has its own unique set of challenges and we always begin by trying to figure out what they are and how to solve them. With Nemo, we had an entire cast of fish characters with no arms or legs. Since they didn’t have the traditional limbs to allow strong silhouettes, we had to invent a whole new bag of tricks. In the beginning it was a bit daunting and frustrating. We began analyzing what was appealing in terms of posing fish. We put a lot of work into the face and getting the facial articulation just right. We didn’t want them to be just heads on sticks like in a Monty Python sketch. Their faces had to be integrated with the entire body language. Where a human character might just turn his head to look at something, a fish might turn his head just a little and the entire body would pivot along with it. Another big factor for us was timing. With characters like Buzz, Woody or Sulley, you have an earth-based gravity. But fish underwater can travel three feet in a flash. You blink and the thing is gone. We were wondering how they did that and studied their movements on video. By slowing things down, we could figure it out. Our timing got very crisp as we learned how to get our fish characters from one place to another in the course of a frame or two. We always tried to incorporate naturalistic fish movements into the acting. By putting things like one-frame darting and transitioning from one place to another into our acting, the characters became very believable.”

11) Adam Summers, a noted professor in the Ecology and Evolution Department at the University of California at Irvine, helped out when it came to animating the fish. He said, "I remember speaking with character designer Ricky Nierva about a fish character and he asked, ‘Where would the eyebrows really be?’ I told him fish don’t have eyebrows. They don’t have any muscles in their face except for jaw closers. Ricky said, ’Adam, fish don’t talk but talking is going to be a requirement for the movie. So we’re going to have to be taking artistic license with science all the time.'"

12) This was the first PIXAR film to not have Randy Newman composing the score. His cousin, Thomas Newman, did the honors. On a more morbid note, Finding Nemo is also the first PIXAR movie to have blood in it.

Concept art of a terrifying-looking Dory.

13) Gill is a Moorish Idol. Apparently, these fish are difficult to keep in captivity, so him being the one most obsessed with escaping the tank makes sense... although I don't think real Moorish Idols come up with elaborate escape plans.

14) For the scene with the jellyfish, PIXAR created an entire new system of shading called "Transblurrency"... it's see-through but blurred, like a frosted bathroom window. The scene contains no less than 74,472 jellyfish. That's a lotta jellyfish.

15) If there's one thing you should keep an eye out for in PIXAR films, it's references to their other movies. For example, that Pizza Planet Truck from Toy Story that's made a cameo in every PIXAR film since (with the possible exception of The Incredibles) appears during the scene where Gill is describing his plan to escape the fish tank.

That's not the only Toy Story reference. Notice anyone familiar among the toys in the dentist's waiting room?

Speaking of the waiting room, that boy who sees the chaos going on through the fish tank near the end of the film is reading a Mr. Incredible comic book.

A more subtle reference to another PIXAR film can be found in the dentist's office. That mobile hanging from the ceiling is actually the same mobile Boo from Monsters Inc. has in her bedroom.

Luigi from Cars makes a cameo just before we see that the Tank Gang succeeded in escaping from the fish tank (sorry, spoiler alert)...

And quite possibly the best reference to another PIXAR film in the whole movie...

16) Animators were sent to aquariums, sent on oceanic dives, given lectures by an ichthyologist, and had study sessions in front of the gigantic fish tank in PIXAR's production office before they started work on the film. It worked a bit too well, as the initial animation the did of the ocean was deemed too realistic.

17) Michael Eisner expected the film to be a box office bomb. Boy, was HE wrong!

18) According to the diploma hanging up on the wall in his waiting room, the dentist graduated from the "PIXAR University School of Dentistry".

That's one of the little green aliens from Toy Story on the seal.

19) The hardest scene in the film for the PIXAR animators to do was the scene with Marlin and Dory inside the whale, due to a combination of lighting issues and having to deal with all of the water splashing around inside the whale's mouth. The original plan for this sequence was to have Marlin and Dory inside the whale's STOMACH as opposed to its mouth. There was just one problem with this, as Oren Jacob put it - "There were only two ways out."

20) Pearl, one of Nemo's classmates, is a flapjack octopus. And that is a species that doesn't live in the Great Barrier Reef. Also, their mouths are under their tentacles, whereas Pearl's mouth is just under her eyes. This is another one of those Artistic License things.

Another example of Artistic License: y'know that joke where one pelican thinks his buddy farted after the underwater submarine blows up? Birds actually can't fart.

Concept art for Nigel and his pelican pals.

21) William H. Macy was originally cast as the voice of Marlin. However, after a test screening, the filmmakers decided that his performance was too dramatic and lacked the warmth needed for Marlin, so they replaced him with Albert Brooks, who Andrew Stanton claimed saved the movie. While Albert enjoyed working on the film, he was disappointed that he didn't get to record his dialogue with the other cast members, unlike when he lent his voice to The Simpsons, because he couldn't ad-lib off the other actors.

22) Dory muttering "Sea monkey's got my money..." in her sleep is a reference to the live action films Disney made in the 1950s and 1960s, like The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes. Apparently, most of those had a character say something along the lines of "The monkey's got my money!".

23) Gerald, the pelican who attempts to eat Marlin and Dory, was initially going to have a larger role. He and Nigel were to be an Odd Couple-esque comedy duo, with Gerald being the sloppy, messy slobby one and Nigel being the neater and more finicky one. Apparently, it didn't work out because it was "as stereotypical as it sounds" and each scene with them brought the movie to a halt.

24) Megan Mullaly was supposed to voice a character in the film at some point too, but she was fired because she refused to do the same voice she did for Karen Walker in Will and Grace. She didn't think it made sense for a fish who lives in a fish tank in a dentist's office "to be a fictious character from an NBC sitcom".

Concept art for Gill.

25) The names of the boats we see in Sydney Harbor are "Sea Monkey" (maybe the owner of the boat is the one who has Dory's money!), "Major Plot Point", "Bow Movement", "iBoat", "Knottie Buoy", "For the Birds" (a reference to the PIXAR short that was shown in theaters before Monsters Inc), "Pier Pressure", "Skiff-A-Dee-Do-Dah", and "The Surly Mermaid".

26) There was originally going to be a scene after Nemo gets flushed down the drain where he travels through a bunch of filtration machines, which is more accurate to how the sewage system works in real life. It was cut because it put too much focus on Nemo - Marlin is the actual main character. And also because it was basically just a repeat of the filter scenes earlier in the movie. Apparently, however, there is a level in the tie-in video game based on the scene.

27) How do you animate a sea anemone? The animators used the very same technology used to animate Sulley's hair in Monsters Inc. However, some strands were animated by hand.

Concept art for Jacques.

28) Darla is named after Darla Anderson, a PIXAR employee who was also the producer of Monsters Inc. Over the years, she's played a lot of pranks on Andrew Stanton and she thinks that this was his way of getting back at her.

29) At a test screening for the film, a mother who was part of the audience suggested cutting or toning down the scene with the anglerfish because she felt it was too scary for kids. Others disagreed - one brainy kid refuted, "If you tone down the anglerfish, it's like you're toning down nature itself."

30) It takes a lot of time to animate a gigantic school of fish. To make this easier, PIXAR created a tool called "Pisces" - fitting, since that sign is commonly represented by two fish circling each other.

Concept art for Crush, dude.

31) Each frame of animation took four days to render due to the complexity of animating underwater environments. According to supervising technical director Oren Jacob, "This film is far more complicated than Monsters, Inc in that almost every shot involves some kind of simulation program or simulated movement. On average, there are more things going on per frame in this movie than we’ve done before by a pretty significant amount. There was more interdependency between the various departments than ever before and we often went back and forth to make sure the lighting and other components looked just right."

32) The three tiki heads in the fish tank are caricatures of PIXAR employees Peter Sohn, Nelson Bohol, and Ricky Nierva.

33) The baby sea turtles' shells are modeled after Hawaiian shirts.

Y'all remember the Finding Nemo ice cream? I ate this!

34) The climax was inspired by an actual event. According to Andrew Stanton, he wasn't sure how to end the movie at first - he wanted something that would test Marlin and Nemo and what they've learned throughout. "But when you've already gone through jellyfish and sharks and all these other set pieces, you're like 'What's left?'," he said. Then he read an article in the back of the paper about some fishermen in Norway who were trying to pull up a whole net of codfish, but the fish weren't having any of that and swam down in unison, capsizing the boat. He found it fascinating and thought it'd be a great climax. Not only would the power of what Nemo and Marlin have learned save them, but also save a hundred others. This is also what led to the earlier scene where the tank fish swim down to help Nemo escape the net that Mr. Sherman is holding. When they pitched the idea to Roy Disney, he asked them to do him one favor - don't capsize the boat.

35) Even though the film mostly takes place in the Great Barrier Reef, Andrew Stanton didn't want EVERY character to have an Australian accent. That allowed them not to have to somehow locate an entire cast of Australians, which is difficult when a film is made in the United States. But he did think it would be funny if the three sharks felt like "guys who have been out in the outback and sort of separate from society a little bit", so all three of them are voiced by actual Australian actors.

36) A year before Finding Nemo was released in theaters, a self-published book by French author Franck Le Calvez came out called Pierrot Le Poisson-Clown. Here is the book's cover:

In yet another case of somebody assuming that the idea of an extremely popular animated movie was stolen from them, Franck sued Disney and PIXAR because he thought Finding Nemo plagiarized his book. The case was thrown out.

In 2021, a YouTube channel called The Film Theorists did a video about the case, suggesting that maybe it was Franck who copied PIXAR - even if the book was released before the film, advertising for the film had already started by the book's release in November 2002 (besides, production on animated films takes YEARS, making the idea that PIXAR and Disney stole from Franck even more unlikely). It's not like that sort of thing has never happened before, even with PIXAR's work... but that's another story for another post.

37) There exists a fish and chips place in Yorkshire, England called "Frying Nemo". It is obviously not a Disney-licensed place. I guess the owners heard Marlin's "Why don't we fry them up now and serve them with chips?!" line and got inspired.

38) Finally, the movie's popularity had two different effects on the pet fish population. On the one hand, demand for clownfish as pets skyrocketed. On the other hand, that resulted in a decline of there being a lot of clownfish in the ocean thanks to so many people capturing them to sell them as pets.

In addition, people also took Gill's "Fish aren't meant to be in a box" comment to heart. Many pet fish found themselves flushed down the toilet. There are two problems with this. One, this doesn't automatically mean that the fish is going to wind up in its natural habitat, so this wound up causing some ecological imbalance. Two, Nemo was really lucky that he actually survived his trip down the drain. Many organizations like JWC Environmental and Australia's Marine Aquarium Council released public service announcements warning people that flushing your fish wasn't a good idea.

Sources:
- https://web.archive.org/web/20100123232221/http://www.pixartalk.com/feature-films/nemo/finding-nemo-production-notes/
- The film's DVD commentary

Remember: fish are friends, not food. Except stinkin' DOLPHINS.

Let's Watch This: "The Tale of Despereaux" (2008)

2008 was a pretty good year for animated movies, wasn't it? We had WALL-E, Kung Fu Panda, Bolt, Horton Hears a Who, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa... I'm not sure how good of a year it was for movies as a whole, but for animated movies, it was fantastic.

Of course, even a good year for animated movies is bound to have at least one stinker in it. Space Chimps was released in 2008, after all. But with so many animated films released in theaters during that time, it's only natural that a few have fallen through the cracks and been forgotten about nowadays. I can name at least three animated movies from 2008 that seemingly no one remembers. The first two are Fly Me to the Moon and Igor, but we'll look at those another time. The third is The Tale of Despereaux.

This movie, an adaptation of a 2003 novel by Kate DiCamillo, was directed by Sam Fell - who previously co-directed, fittingly, another animated film about rodents, 2006's Flushed Away - and Rob Stevenhagen. It was released on December 19th, 2008 by Universal Pictures, with the film's animation provided by Framestore Animation. It did... reasonably well at the box office, making $86.9 million on a $60 million budget and received mixed reviews from critics (it has a fifty-seven percent "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes).

I remember seeing ads for The Tale of Despereaux. I think I also had a tie-in storybook, but I never actually saw the film. Not sure why. Maybe it just didn't look that interesting to me. But it's been on my "to review" list for quite some time, so let's give it a watch. This is The Tale of Despereaux.

After the opening credits, the film starts off with narrator Sigourney Weaver telling us that once there was a mouse who loved honor and justice, and always told the truth. But instead of seeing this mouse, we see a ship sailing on the ocean blue. On that ship are a bunch of sailors... and also a rodent who is pointedly NOT the honor-loving mouse Sigourney Weaver was telling us about. This rodent is a RAT. And as we all know, rats are the scum of the Earth. The anti-mouse. Filthy vermin who carry plagues and dirtiness.

You'd think a film directed by the same guy who co-directed Flushed Away would be
a bit more tolerant of rats.

This is Roscuro, voiced by Dustin "Master Shifu" Hoffman. Apparently he can talk to humans, because a sailor named Pietro (Charles Shaughnessy) can understand him just fine. Pietro tells him that the ship is heading to one of the most magical places in the whole world... no, not Disney World. The Kingdom of Dor (I guess all the good kingdom names were taken). Which looks a lot like the kingdom from Tangled.

I know this film came out two years before Tangled. I'm not suggesting that whoever
was in charge of designing the kingdom snuck into the Disney animation studio and swiped
concept art of the kingdom from their still in-production Rapunzel adaptation. But it DOES look a lot like the kingdom in Tangled, doesn't it?

The Kingdom of Dor's claim to fame is that it has great soup. They love soup so much, in fact, that they have a whole holiday about it. Soup Day, where everyone wears funny hats and flies in hot air balloons that look like tomatoes and zucchini. It's an even bigger deal for them than Christmas!

I've never been in a hot air balloon (unless you count a ride at King's Dominion
with hot air balloon-shaped vehicles). That's probably not very interesting, but I couldn't
think of anything funny to say here.

On Soup Day, everyone in the kingdom flocks towards the castle, knowing that in the royal kitchen, a masterpiece is being created. Chefs, led by the Kevin Kline-voiced Chef Andre, are hard at work making soup for the whole kingdom to enjoy. I really like how the chefs use elaborate pulley systems and giant water wheels to make the soup. Sure, you could just chop the veggies by hand, but where's the fun in THAT?

I also love how they have a giant cauldron to put the soup in. Look at it. It's ginormous! Gotta be at least as big as a house. I wonder if they ever have any soup left over once everyone has gotten a bowl.

So THIS is where the Black Cauldron wound up after the Horned King was destroyed...

Andre takes a whiff of the soup and declares that it needs more onions (Shrek would approve). But even after the onions are added, Andre still isn't satisfied - he's one of those fussy French chefs who won't allow for anything less than perfection. So he consults his magic genie made of produce... wait, WHAT?

This is probably the character I remember most from the movie (aside from Despereaux himself, I mean). Say hello to Boldo (Stanley Tucci), who with his design that straddles the line between cool-looking and creepy and his weird accent is actually NOT in the original book, according to Wikipedia. He was created for the movie. Because... I guess the story needed a genie with a watermelon for a head, a pear for a nose, and pickle eyebrows. Unlike other genies, Boldo doesn't seem to grant wishes. Instead, he helps Andre with his soups... or rather, puts in ingredients that he thinks will improve the soups, but usually just results in Andre throwing a fit. 

Do you think any fans of the film have ever actually attempted to build a Boldo out of actual produce? That would be neat.

"No, Andre, I am NOT going to sing 'Friend Like Me'! I am fed up with your Aladdin jokes!"

Andre and his magical mushroom-eared amigo start throwing things at each other, which culminates in a bottle that looks very much like a bottle of wine winding up in the soup. I'm not sure what exactly was in that bottle, but whatever it was, it apparently makes the soup taste magnifique. So... crisis averted, I guess.

Soon everyone is gathered in the royal banquet hall, and Andre brings in the soup - in a much smaller pot, presumably because the giant one is too hard to transport. The queen is the first to taste it, unaware that Roscuro is hanging out on a chandelier above her head. Unsurprisingly, he winds up falling off the chandelier and into her soup. Also unsurprisingly, she's all "EEEEEEEEEEEK! A rodent! In my SOUP!".

"Waiter, there's a rat in my soup!"

"SSSSSSSSSSSSSH! Not so loud! Everyone else will want one, too!"

The queen is so horrified that there's a rat in her soup that she dies. "GET! ME! THAT! RAAAAAAAAAT!" the king shouts, and suddenly Roscuro has a bunch of knights after his tail. Throughout this scene, he's constantly yammering, and nobody seems at all weirded-out that the rat can talk. They chase him into the kitchen... insert Ratatouille joke here... and, after nearly falling into the soup, he escapes into the sewers, where he runs into this guy:

I know I just made a Ratatouille reference, but when I saw this guy I immediately
thought "Anton Ego Rat". I can't be the only one who sees the resemblance.

Because a rat kinda sorta killed the queen, the king decides to outlaw not just rats, but also SOUP. Yep, no more soup in the kingdom of Dor. And if anybody harbors a rat, they will face the king's wrath. "So think about this: what happens when you make something illegal that is just a natural part of the world?" the narrator asks. "You may as well make FLIES illegal, or SWEAT, or MONDAY MORNING. But that's what the king did."

With soup and rats banned, the kingdom becomes a cloudy, drab, and depressing place. For a long time, it doesn't even RAIN. For some reason. I guess the Rain Gods are just really, really fond of soup and rats, and the king's outlawing soup and rats made them angry? But, the narrator says, if you know anything about fairy tales, you know that a hero doesn't appear until the world really needs one.

But first, the camera takes us through a small hole in the wall and into the little town populated by mice known as... "Mouseworld". Yeah, the name's a bit on-the-nose, but what are you gonna do?

If you ever have a tiny hole in your wall, chances are it leads to either here or Fraggle Rock.

One resident of Mouseworld, a chubby mouse named Lester (William H. Macy), is dashing around excited because his wife is having a baby. Just one? According to my research, mice can give birth to at least six or eight babies - or pups, which is what baby mice are called - at a time. Of course, real mice don't talk or wear clothes, so I guess we can just chalk it up to artistic license. When he gets home, the baby has apparently been born, but there's something odd about him. His eyes are open, and he's not cowering. But the weirdest thing of all is that he has huge ears.

So what? Mickey has huge ears and he's the most famous mouse in the world!

And from the very beginning, this cute little mouse, Despereaux Tilling, hears more, sees more, and even smells more than any of the other mice. He also becomes a risk-taker, jumping over mouse traps to snatch the cheese from them. And as he grows, he remains very small - even for a mouse. But he doesn't notice. In fact, in his own mind, Despereaux is a giant. A rodent of unusual size, if you will.

I'm guessing Despereaux plush toys sold really well. They DID make Despereaux plush
toys, didn't they?

Lester and his wife, Antoinette (Frances Conroy), are worried because Despereaux is so brave, instead of cowardly like all the other mice. In school, when his teacher shows the students a drawing of a carving knife, the other mice children shriek and hide... but Despereaux just sits there nonchalantly. It's during this scene that we get to hear Despereaux speak.

...and, with all due respect towards Matthew Broderick, why is his voice coming out of a mouse that's supposed to be a young boy? What, could they just not find a good child actor? Were the Spouse twins unavailable? Was having all these other celebrities in the cast not enough to sell tickets so they needed to cast a celebrity as Despereaux too?

There's a reason why PIXAR didn't cast, say, Ben Stiller as the voice of Nemo.

We then see Despereaux and three more mouse kids at a sewer grate. The other kids warn Despereaux not to go down into the sewer, because that's where the rats live and they'll eat Despereaux and pull his arms off. This is probably meant to be some sort of rodent racism, but rats actually do eat mice. Would that be considered cannibalism?

Apparently, mice are sent down to the sewer to be eaten by rats when they break the rules. One of the rules, apparently, is that they can't feed the rats, but that doesn't stop Despereaux from tossing down some cheese. After following the cheese down into the sewers, we see the charming town that the rats call home: "Ratworld". Very reminiscent of the rat city in Flushed Away, except there aren't any singing slugs.

I wish they'd put a bit more thought into the names of these towns.

Ratworld is a pretty creepy place, mainly because of the bones scattered around, but the rats themselves don't seem like too bad a bunch... with the exception of the ruler of Ratworld, that lanky rat we saw earlier. His name is Botticelli (Ciaran Hinds), and he might as well be wearing a giant neon sign that reads "I AM A VILLAIN".

I still think he looks like Anton Ego.

Back to Despereaux, who is starting to wonder what it's like outside his tiny home of Mouseworld. Before he can find out, he is summoned by his principal (Richard Jenkins), who tells him that he must learn to be afraid of everything like the other mice. Perhaps he just needs to see his brother, Furlough (Tony Hale), in action to get in touch with his inner coward. Furlough takes him to the castle library so they can nibble on some books, but instead of eating the books, Despereaux - horror of horrors - starts READING one. Apparently, it's a rule that mice aren't allowed to read. Who makes these rules?

Spoiler alert: Despereaux reads the book anyway as soon as Furlough scampers off. It's about a princess who's locked in a faraway castle where she can see the world but never touch it, and who longs for a prince to save her. Gee, doesn't this sound a lot like ANOTHER princess from an animated movie? An animated movie about a green ogre who I already mentioned previously in this review?

While reading the book one day, Despereaux catches a glimpse of the king's daughter, Princess Pea (Emma Watson). He sneaks into her bedroom and starts talking to her... and, again, she isn't all that fazed over the fact that a mouse can talk. She does call him "a strange little mouse", but still...

Not a huge fan of the princess' design. She's a bit too "just stepped out of Coraline"-looking,
if that makes any sense.

Oh no. I know where this is going. Please tell me they're not going to have a romance between a mouse - who, despite being voiced by Matthew Broderick, is supposed to be a young boy - and a human teenager. Please tell me this isn't another Bee Movie. I mean, what will the children look like?

Probably something like THIS...

Okay, so mouse likes human girl. Let's throw in another subplot to get our minds off how disturbing that is, shall we? The castle maid, Miggery Sow (Tracey Ullman), has wanted to be a princess since she was living on a farm tending to pigs... oh, I get it. That's why her name is Miggery SOW. 'Cause a SOW is what you call a female pig. Clever, guys.

So, is Miggery Sow going to become a princess? We'll have to find out later, because we cut to Despereaux telling Furlough about his encounter with the princess. Furlough is horrified - "Despereaux! You can't talk to a human!" he exclaims. "They will throw you in the dungeon! You will be eaten by RATS!" But Despereaux is too head-over-heels in love to care about that. Reminder: he is a mouse. A mouse who is also a little boy. The princess is A) human and B) clearly at least a teenager.

"Do you think she believes in interspecies dating?"

Lester overhears, and when he finds out that Despereaux had a conversation with a human, he starts to panic. "We need to tell them. We need to tell the Mouse Council," he frets. "This is bad. This is very bad. If they find out, if they find out that they DIDN'T find out... oooooooooooh, then they'll find out that it was ME who... oh no..." Maybe if they beg - they REAAAAAAAAAALLY beg - and show them that he's afraid, and that he's turned into a real mouse, they won't send him to the dungeon. I'm not sure if the mayor (Frank Langella) and the two other mice in ruffled collars and funny hats accompanying him are part of the Mouse Council, but if they are, them catching Despereaux in the act of reading is not exactly ideal.

"It's not right for a mouse to read. Soon they start getting ideas, and THINKING..."

Despereaux is put on trial for "refusing training as a mouse", "refusing to respect the will and guidance of elder mice", "repeatedly engaging in bold and unmeek behavior", "triggering willfully not less than seventeen mousetraps", and "having personal contact with a human being". "Despereaux Willing, our laws are here to protect us and our way of life," the mayor says. "And when one of our citizens strays from that way of life, he becomes a threat to us all." This seems a bit extreme - how exactly is Despereaux acting brave and talking to ONE human being a threat to all mice? What, do they think he's going to eventually revolt against the Mouse Council or something?

Shouldn't he at least have a lawyer?

The Mouse Council have decided that Despereaux must be banished to the sewers. And Lester, despite claiming that he would REAAAAAAAAAAAALLY beg and show them that his son is a real mouse, doesn't do anything about it. What the heck, Lester?

Two mouse guards take Despereaux to an old mouse named Hovis (Christopher Lloyd), who wraps red thread around Despereaux's waist and lowers him down - but instead of falling into the sewers, Despereaux manages to swing through a window with bars on it. After a run-in with a creepy skeleton, Despereaux finds a jail cell filled with rats - and one human guard, Gregory (Robbie Coltrane). Once again, Gregory does not question the fact that a mouse can talk, but isn't in the mood to hear Despereaux's "stories about princesses and sunshine" and suggests he tell them to the rats.

So is rodents being able to talk just common knowledge in this kingdom? If so, why are
the mice of Mouseworld banned from talking to humans?

Gregory leaves Despereaux to be swarmed by the rats. All of a sudden, Despereaux is in the middle of some sort of rat arena, where Botticelli is serving as the Emperor Nero equivalent. "Let the games begin!" he declares, prompting the rats to unleash a mangy-looking cat.

So, these rats have somehow managed to capture and chain up a cat? Why didn't the cat just eat them all? Was it just not hungry at the moment? And how come in this world, mice and rats can talk but cats don't seem to? I mean, don't get me wrong, this IS a really cool idea for a roman colosseum take-off - a mouse is put up against a cat for the enjoyment of rats - but it does raise a few questions.

"I actually don't hate Mondays. Wednesdays, on the other hand..."

Fortunately, Roscuro - the only rat who Botticelli hasn't been able to corrupt - saves Despereaux just as the cat has him cornered by asking if he can eat him instead. "Well, this is progress..." Botticelli purrs. Even though the other rats are irate... or should I say i-RAT-e (sorry, I couldn't resist)... Roscuro leads Despereaux away to the only part of the sewers where light shines through. 

Over the next few weeks, Despereaux tells Roscuro everything he knows about honor and bravery and chivlery and the princess and all that. Meanwhile, Miggery Sow is tasked with bringing slop to Gregory, who reveals that he's a grouch because he had to give up his infant daughter. For some reason. I hope this subplot actually goes somewhere and we're not just wasting our time on the maid.

Roscuro, who overheard their conversation, explains to Despereaux that it was kind of his fault rats got banished from the kingdom. He wants to apologize to the princess for it, so he sneaks into the princess' bedroom. But as soon as she sees him, she immediately recognizes him as the rat who... well, y'know... and freaks out.

"You're going to give me the Black Plague!"

"No, no, that was the BLACK Rat. I'm a BROWN Rat. We helped END the plague."

Roscuro narrowly manages to escape while Princess Pea is shrieking about a rat in her room, but the knights give chase. After getting away from them, he sadly looks at his reflection in a pot and his heart hardens. Then he comes across Miggery Sow and tells her that he wants the same thing she does. Uh oh, what are they planning? Also, could we please have Boldo back? You can't just throw a genie made of produce at us and then just never have the character show up again. It's way too bizarre a character to waste.

Well, we get to see Andre again, at least. He finds Miggery Sow in the kitchen, swiping a knife. She claims that she's, uh, just borrowing it to chop apples. Oh, and Miggery Sow is Gregory's daughter. You probably saw that coming, didn't you?

Now, to be honest, I was initially expecting Miggery Sow to try and murder Princess Pea with that knife, but I guess the filmmakers thought that would be too dark. So instead, she simply ties her up and forces her at knifepoint into the dungeon. Then she will take over as the princess. I'm not quite sure that's how it works (for one thing, won't somebody wonder where Princess Pea is?), but okay...

So, the moral of this story is that ugly people are evil? That seems like a pretty bad moral.

Fortunately, Despereaux hears Princess Pea's cries for help (he's got big ears, remember) and rushes to the rescue. She tells him to go tell her father what's going on - he can take the necklace she's wearing as proof that he's honest and true - but to get to the king, he must first get by...

Cue the dramatic music.

...y'know, considering how rodent-infested that castle is, no wonder there are so many mousetraps set up. He gets by the mousetraps, but loses the necklace. Hopefully the king will still believe him - and they can save his daughter before the rats, who are currently carrying her into the arena from before, kill her. Oh, and in case you're wondering about Miggery Sow, Roscuro double-crossed her and locked her up too.

To get to the king, Despereaux flies down to him with his big ears - I knew I had to make a Dumbo reference SOMEWHERE in this review, but what luck, the film is doing it for me! Unfortunately, the king is too busy playing his lute that he can't hear or see the little mouse begging him for help. So then Despereaux goes back to Mouseworld and tries to get his dad's help. But because he's covered with flour, Lester immediately assumes that he's a g-g-g-g-GHOST and faints. Then he goes to Furlough, who ALSO assumes that he's a ghost and runs away screaming. He eventually gets the idea to ring a bell, which gets the attention of Andre, who... starts making soup. Geez, that princess is NEVER gonna be rescued, is she? Maybe Despereaux should've called up Super Mario...

The smell of soup wafts out of the castle and into the sky, pleasing the Rain Gods and causing a downpour. And guess who shows up again? That's right, Boldo!

I'll take THIS genie over Blue Will Smith any day!

Then Despereaux gets Andre's attention by jabbing a sewing needle into his foot... ouch... and tells him that the princess is in danger. Andre doesn't believe him, but Boldo does, and demonstrates why he is the best character in the movie by rushing with Despereaux to save her. Unfortunately, on the way there Boldo winds up falling apart after the rats find out he's edible. Fortunately, Gregory comes across Miggery Sow and lets her out - and realizes that she's his daughter. More good news - the sun returns and basks the kingdom in its warmth.

Alas, the princess is still captured and I guess the rats are planning to eat her. Roscuro is given the honor of doing so, but can't bring himself to do it (forgiveness and all that)... which doesn't stop Botticelli from doing it instead. The hungry rats attack the princess, and it's up to Despereaux to save her, which he accomplishes by releasing the cat.

I kind of want to know the cat's story... how did it get that scar?

"Gee, maybe keeping an animal much larger than us that's known for eating our species
chained up wasn't such a good idea!"

"YOU THINK?!"

But Despereaux still has to deal with Botticelli. Just as he's about to feed Despereaux to the cat, sunlight reflects into the sewers, and the rats go all Gremlins and react harshly to the light. Roscuro uses a magnifying glass to do this:

If it works on ants, it should work on a rat too.

...and Botticelli falls off the barrel he was standing on and is promptly gobbled up by the cat. Roscuro and Princess Pea apologize to each other, and the king looks out the window to see all of his subjects cheering. "So, you could call all of this a big misunderstanding if you wanted to," the narrator claims. "A king was hurt, so he hurt a rat. And a rat was hurt, so he hurt a princess. And a princess was hurt, so she hurt a servant girl without even meaning to. And that servant had been hurting for so long that almost nothing could make her feel better. But was it a mistake or... was it just good luck? Because the servant girl went back to her farm, and the jailer finally found his princess."

And now the mice are all brave like Despereaux, and the rats are now free to live among the people of Dor... except for Roscuro, who goes back to sea. And they all live happily ever after.

But wait - what about Boldo? Did all the king's horses and all the king's men put him back together? I demand an explanation on what happened to Boldo!

"Eat your heart out, Fievel!"

What's the Verdict?

The Tale of Despereaux is just okay, honestly. You know that old expression "too many cooks spoil the soup"? Well, in this case (and yes, I did bring up that expression simply because so much of the movie focuses on soup), I feel that too many plot threads spoiled the movie. There's so many characters here and so many subplots that it makes the film feel a bit unfocused, with Despereaux himself basically feeling like an afterthought when the third act starts up. Characters who have the potential to be interesting, like the king and Andre, are pushed to the side... exploring them would be a lot more interesting than the stuff with the maid and the jailer. The animation, being CGI from the 2000s, hasn't aged super-well... the mice look okay but the humans are kind of off-putting. The celebrities are all doing their best, but a lot of them are either miscast (Matthew Broderick, Tony Hale) or aren't given much to do (William H. Macy, Kevin Kline). I think this had the potential to be a much better movie, but as is, it's fine. Worth watching at least once. I give it three soup bowls out of five.

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