**Marking this one with spoilers but not marking them individually myself. Fair warning.**

When I first read the book and watched this movie, I actually preferred the movie over the book. About 15 years later I’ve revisited them both, and it’s hard to believe I felt that way. Not only do I now feel the book is far superior; I _really, strongly_ dislike the film adaptation.

I’m not about to go over every single difference between the two, as there are _plenty_. Plus, it’s not so much that it’s not acceptable for there to be differences when books are made into movies, but… well….

Here are some of my complaints, not in any particular or chronological order.

The film began and continued to play out as if it were, _The Tale of Roscuro_, rather than, _of Despereaux_.

Roscuro coming in from a sea ship versus already being there didn’t add anything. Either way, he was drawn towards the light and not the dark. His human friend was rather useless to the rewritten story too. He was overly introduced at the start considering. He may as well not been, when Roscuro could have hopped off a pirate ship without him. His strong appearance would’ve only been fitting if he’d later shown up in the castle, and been a part of the events unfolding. Because he was worried and looking for his rat friend, and maybe to serve as a reminder that Roscuro wasn’t being the good rat he knew him to be, and to help lead him back out of the darkness he’d found himself in. Hey, if they’re gonna change details to such an extent, they may as well commit!

Despereaux’s character is made out to be as if he’s some outgoing, fearless, kamikaze daredevil. Instead of the sweet, somewhat reserved, ultimately bookish and likely introverted little mouse enchanted by beauty and music that he was written as. He was also described as sickly in the book, constantly coughing and often fainting.

Despereaux flies like Dumbo. _Really?_

Some of the character design was atrocious. Namely the King and the Princess were _so_ not pretty, and the Princess Pea was supposed to be. Miggery Sow and Gregory were far more normal looking than the royalty were. I guess, at least Pea’s face made sense when combining her mother’s and father’s.

Speaking of character design, there was Boldo. The magic fruit and vegetable man that secretly helps the King’s chef make good soup?! He was completely out of left field and so minimally present that he nearly felt pointless. The book didn’t have magical creatures/men in it. The most “magical” thing was the fact that the mice and rats could speak to and understand the humans, no questions asked.

There were also zero cats in the book, I’m fairly certain. The arena with one was stupid and wholly unnecessary to me, just as Boldo and the rat’s friend, Pietro (I finally looked it up,) were.

There was also this situation where, when the King banned soup, the kingdom remained cloudy all the time, and rainfall altogether stopped. It doesn’t actually make any sense that the two things would correlate? Not that such seemingly magical happenings always have to, especially in children’s movies, but this didn’t seem to fit here. So much didn’t fit here, so much felt unnecessary.

Another scene that I didn’t find fitting; when Princess Pea essentially murders the rat, Botticelli. She didn’t murder anyone in the book! And no one else murdered Botticelli in the book either.

I’m not sure that this story should have even been attempted as a kid’s movie. Young adult, yes, but not just for kids in general. I believe the biggest issue with the adaptation is that they overdid it in trying to make it less dark, but because the story is literally about various ways in which the characters find themselves in dark places and head spaces, the changes didn’t make enough of a difference. I read several IMDb reviews where parents complained that the story was far too dark for children, and none of these mentioned reading the book. Any parents that did mention the book only gushed about how well received it was, by themselves and their children. So it obviously matters how the story is told, and Kate DiCamillo did it right.

I also read reviews where teachers shared the book and then the movie with students, and the students reportedly most always loved the book and hated the movie. Admittedly, my daughter said she preferred the movie, but that may be an age/generational thing, if I were to speculate.

One of the notable changes I understood was deciding that Miggery Sow was simply hard of hearing just because, rather than, she was nearly deaf because the man her father had sold her to beat the shit out of her every damn day for his own amusement. That’s a rather dark notion for little minds to digest.

Darkness is a key component in _The Tale of Despereaux_. It’s about how anyone can fall into darkness, how far darkness can drive someone, how it is possible to come out of the darkness, how sometimes one is never the same after, and even how one can be forgiven after getting lost in the dark by those who can still manage to seek the light.

There really wasn’t a way to take the darkness out of this story and they shouldn’t have bothered trying to.