I Watch Films: The Amazing Maurice

 

The Amazing Maurice

Maurice is a talking cat, who travels with a group of talking rats and a talking boy, Keith. Together they travel about running a Pied Piper scam on unsuspecting villagers. They plan to go to an island that’s in a book about talking animals that they take as a holy text but both Keith and Maurice know is fiction, for kids. Unhappy with the dishonesty they decide to try for one last big score.

That score is in the town of Bad Blintz, which already has rat-catchers, rat-catchers so good that no one has seen a rat for ages. Yet despite this food keeps disappearing, so no one has anything to eat. Keith meets Malicia, the mayor’s daughter, who believes in the power of stories and that things will work out, as she is the heroine of this story. She swiftly spots that Maurice is a talking cat. They start to investigate.

Based on a Terry Pratchett book – a Discworld for kids – it wears the background lightly, but is deep into its own meta-structure. Both Malicia and Maurice turn out to be able to talk to camera, and the Rats and Malicia are engaged with texts (and Text). Having done a Pied Piper scam they encounter an actual Pied Piper. References to cats and rats in popular culture just appear; as ever the Discworld mirrors our world when there is a point to be made.

Watch This: A fun kid’s film about faith, rats, cats, guilt, cons, and stories
Don’t Watch This: It’s very clever, which occasionally makes it too clever trying to do too many things at once