The Amazing Maurice (2023) - Movie Review

With how badly director Toby Genkel’s previous animated ventures have turned out, being responsible for the gargantuan irritants of the Nestrians in the Two By Two films, the prospect of him helming an adaptation of Terry bloody Pratchett is… concerning, to say the least. Doubly so because this will be the first theatrical adaptation of Pratchett’s Discworld canon, being relegated to TV miniseries up to this point. However, knowing that the writing and storytelling was ultimately the biggest problem with Two By Two, and this is built on a foundation not reliant on toy sales to justify its existence, maybe this will work out for a change.

Well, for a start, the animation from Studio Rakete (also responsible for Two By Two) and Red Star 3D is… okay. The textures are up to mainstream standards, ditto for the lighting effects, but there’s a definite genericness to the visualisation of both the humans and the talking animals. Even when things in the plot get closer to the finale, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it’s being held back from being as truly good as it could be. However, I will say that the character designs are cool, from the titular cat looking like the epitome of fluffy cheek, to the main villain in the Boss Man who… yeah, not gonna lie, kind of creepy.

As for the story, I’ll admit that I know Pratchett’s work more by reputation by personal engagement; I have vague memories of the Hogfather miniseries, but I’m not sure if I watched the actual series or just a video of someone else reviewing it. However, based purely on this, I am more than willing to give them a look. Toying around with the classical narrative structure of fairy tales, the Pied Piper of Hamelin in particular, this is basically a story about stories. From the mix-and-match use of influences from that original story, showing Maurice (Hugh Laurie) as a travelling con-cat helping rid towns of a ‘plague’ of rats thanks to piper Keith (Himesh Patel), to the in-universe framing device of the book Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure, to Malicia (Emilia Clarke) and her seeming inability to talk about anything other than the components of storytelling, metafiction is at the core of everything here.

This kind of incredibly on-the-nose approach to the idea of stories-within-stories could so easily have gone awry, and to be honest, there are quite a few moments where it threatens to go over the edge. But as an attempt to teach the target audience (kids) about those aspects of stories, I’d say it does well enough, and the way it plays into the main narrative concerning Maurice, his gang, and their misadventures in the town of Bad Blintz, is quite satisfying. It essentially emphasises the importance of recognising one’s own narrative in life, being the hero of your own story rather than merely featuring in someone else’s, and how finding that kind of purpose can lead one to become greater than what they merely ‘are’. (I should specify here that I’m talking about being the lead of your story, not the story; the former acknowledges your own agency in what happens in your life, while the latter is the idea that anything that ever happens is all about you. Too many people get those two confused.)

There’s also the bits of Discworld lore peppered throughout this as well, which (again, speaking as an outsider to these works) I thought were also handled well. They’re not so intrusive as to disrupt the flow of the central story, and they aren’t so distracting as to make that story seem superfluous. I knew a bit about this universe’s version of the Grim Reaper from Hogfather, who also makes an appearance here, and there’s also the explanation for the talking cat and rats to do with where a magic school throw away all their failed experiments and uneaten food. On top of actually giving an explanation for the talking animals, which rarely if ever pops up in these films, the juxtaposition of a magic school and a trash heap got a cheap laugh out of me since… well, after how badly Secrets Of Dumbledore was apparently received, that imagery seems fitting.

I can definitely see some audiences being annoyed by just how self-aware this story is, and others by the ‘nothing special’ animation, but I quite liked this. It’s a drastic and merciful change of pace from Toby Genkel’s usual fare, and the mainstream boost of the production (cast full of real British voice talent, script credit from Shrek co-writer Terry Rossio) help make everything feel more substantial and worthy of the source material being adapted. If you’re looking for a take on how faithful or effective this is as a strict adaptation, I’m the wrong Dude to ask, but as a family film from a studio and genre that I have bad history with, it’s a hell of a lot cooler than I was expecting and that’s more than fine with me.