The Amazing Maurice: Movie Review

Vocal cast: Hugh Laurie, Emilia Clarke, David Tennant, David Thewlis, Himesh Patel
Director: Toby Genkel

Terry Pratchett's worlds have been ripe for the plucking for years.

But they've never really quite translated to the big screen or the small screen. And this latest animated outing, which has been adapted from Pratchett's children's fantasy novel, The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents feels like another case of the almost could have stable.

It stars Laurie as a tenaciously devious ginger cat, Maurice, who corrals a bunch of rats into conning various villages into believing they are infested and then gets them to pay up when his human friend Keith (Patel) comes along as a pied piper and saves the day.

However, the rats and their cat bite off more than they can chew when they encounter a village that's bereft of food, bereft of rodents and villagers. As Maurice and his pals begin to investigate, they find there's more to this story than first seems.

The Amazing Maurice has some wonderfully Gallic looking Euro animation that feels chunky and born of Ratatouille's edges with some characters that benefit from the vocal performance and athletics of their actors.

Yet, it also presents elements of fourth-wall breaking and narration which feel at odds with who's watching the film; elements which work better seemingly on the page than they do on the screen. It's almost as if Pratchett's irreverence and tone for characters has been wiped away by a degree of bland onscreen action that feels family-oriented but strangely without presence.

There are moments when it feels subversive and humane, but The Amazing Maurice would have benefited greatly from a more definitive tone and a definite tonal choice - as an end product, it's watchable enough, but sadly forgettable the moment it's done, which is not how Pratchett's Discworld could - or should - be.