While it cuts some of Pratchett’s most incisive and dark components (like the intelligent rats navigating relationships with regular rats) in favor of cinematic comprehension, it’s still a faithful enough translation to win fans over-and introduce kids to a welcoming literary world that takes the piss out of everything around it. But, because the film has faith in its young viewers, it’s completely achievable. They’d better be able to keep up with Malicia’s (Emilia Clarke) rapid sledgehammer blows smashing through the fourth wall, because the narrator finds herself wrapped up in her own story they’d also better be able to parse the nested myths explaining how some of the tale’s animals came to grasp such intelligence. Turning the Pied Piper story on its head, and then flipping it around again so that it’s right-side up but utterly disoriented, The Amazing Maurice asks plenty of its young audience. As a former kid with a lot of affection for the animated movies that used to freak me out, that’s a compliment. This isn’t pristine, groundbreaking, photoreal CG, but cartoonishness that suits its oddballs-and might even give a kid a stray nightmare or two. Stuffed with motormouths and throwaway gags, the chunky animation can be a little off-putting, but its momentary ugliness feeds into its delightfully dark villains, its underdog heroes and the strange story tying them all together.

Starring: Hugh Laurie, Emilia Clarke, Himesh Patel, Gemma ArtertonĪdapting Terry Pratchett’s Carnegie-winning Discworld book, The Amazing Maurice is a successfully wry, odd, utterly British spin on the Shrek-like self-aware fairy tale.

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