Maurice der Kater

This animated film is based on "The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents", which is a wonderful book that is well worth a read.

Look at the quality of the animation, I found it to be generally good and occasional great. The color palette was fairly standard for an animated film, but the attention to detail in each frame was impressive. The character designs were okay, but not particularly unique or memorable. The world building was decent, but it did not offer anything particularly new or interesting.

The voice cast was good, Hugh Laurie is always great, and the whole cast did a decent job of bringing the characters to life. The humour, emotion, and depth were okay, and occasional great.

So, "The Amazing Maurice" is a decent animated film that has its good points, but also some areas for improvement. The animation is okay, the world building is decent, and the voice acting is entertaining. If you're looking for an pretty good animated film that will pass the time, this could be a good option. However, it's not a must-see film that will leave a lasting impression.

I was positively shocked from watching this. It feels that this is what Disney has forgotten how to be. It's an animation. It's a stellar animation. It's an animation with talking animals. It's a comedy. It's satirical. And it's just... so, sooooo attentive to detail. Tons of carefully crafted mimicry and gestures, faces, expressions, poses. I can't quite remember the last time I saw anything like it.

Sure, there is no wow effect. It might not look great on the big screen, where you are supposed to see clear blobs of image, while counting every rendered piece of air, and with no pause or rewind. In terms of cost - this is obviously no big production(though the animation is spectacularly clean). But that's what the big productions lack nowadays - soul. Making a single meme face is enough. Meanwhile this little gem is just filled with emotion in every scene.

On top of that - I have to give props to the voice cast. Whether it's the script, the audio engineer or the relatively stellar cast - it's a pleasure to hear virtually any character in this film. I can't say that there's any remarkable music, given the budget, but it's enough to serve the purpose.

Finally, and this is important - this film is clean. There is no agenda. It's an honest family-friendly picture. Funny, with careful moral of the story woven in, just enough for the kids to figure out, but without being preachy or propagandistic.

Maybe the 9\10 rating is a bit too much, given that this is something to reserve only for historical pictures, but this is a small, European production. When even the multi-hundred-million dollar Hollywood flops often can't convince you - how else to show appreciation for the underdog?

The trick with a film like this is to make a film that is both accessible to everyone, and that includes young children as well as to the Terry Pratchett faithful. I'm delighted to say this film manages both in spades.

The casting is fantastic and the animation, including British animation is wonderful and a delight not to be in the world of Disney for an animated feature. I don't know much about Terry Pratchett, but I have read this book and it manages to hit all the points that I would expect, with great characters and so many laughs in the cinema where we watched an early showing. The children, especially with riveted it seemed.

Really nice film with lots of good voice acting and the story is a nice one that rattles on nicely. Full of twists and turns and ups and downs.

Hugh Laurie is great, Emilia clarke is the star of the show but all of the vocal work is good

Terry Pratchetts story so obviously discworld plays a part and Death shows up as you would expect. If you enjoy discworld you'll love it and to be fair even if you're not, it's a great film to watch with the kids. I watched it with two 12 year old boys and a 6 year old boy and they all enjoyed it

They all enjoyed it and put it in the 7/8 out of 10

Enjoyed.

Saw this at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.

"The Amazing Maurice" is a story that follows Maurice, a goofy streetwise cat, who has the perfect money-making scam. He finds a dumb-looking kid who plays a pipe and has his very own horde of rats, who are strangely literate. I love animated films and I usually like to check out animated films from smaller studios to give them chances. As part of the Sundance Kids selection, while it's cheesy and unspecial, this is probably one of the better children films to show for kids. I have never read the book before but the film does offers some charm and has a decent personality.

The main story is pretty basic and predictable but even it's simple setting, the film does have some fun humor and the tone understands itself without taking itself fully seriously. The animation models and colors were simple but they were pretty good and had some cute looking characters. Most of the voice acting was pretty good especially actor David Thewlis who gives the best voice performance from the entire cast. For the most part, it was never boring despite it being pretty predictable and some of the characters could have been explored a little more.

Overall, it was alright but good for children to have a good time.

Rating: B-