Tiresome Maurice

The animated film Marvelous Maurice by Toby Genckel and Florian Westermann, an adaptation of Terry Pratchett’s children’s book about a talking cat and his intelligent rat friends, was released. Tells Yulia Shagelman.

Those who are familiar with the work of Terry Pratchett, of course, will not be surprised that “The Amazing Maurice” is only formally a children’s cartoon. Yes, his poster is decorated with a charming red cat with a fluffy tail, and talking animals predominate among the characters, but there is also Death in person, along with his younger comrade Rat Death. The script, in which Pratchett is listed as one of the four co-authors, for the most part consists of monologues and dialogues, replete with wordplay and compound witticisms that are characteristic of his style and lose a lot in translation. In the original, all these verbal laces were voiced by the best representatives of the “British communal”: Hugh Laurie as the talking cat Maurice, David Tennant, David Thewlis, Emilia Clarke, Gemma Arterton, Hugh Bonneville and others. In the Russian dubbing, Sergey Burunov gave his voice to the main character, but the rest of the cast is far from being so stellar.

From the very first frames, the authors make it clear how ironic the spectacle is before us. The film starts not at all with an acquaintance with the title character, but with a completely different character, Mr. Rabbit from the book “The Adventures of Mr. Rabbit”, which is read by the narrator Malicia. She immediately explains that the story of Mr. Rabbit is a frame technique, and at the same time what, in fact, is a “frame technique”. After all, what’s better for family movie entertainment than a good dose of intertextual analysis right on the doorstep? By the time the fifth postmodernist joke is played – at about the fifth minute of the running time – you will want to leave the cinema hall for some air and be in silence for a while, where no one jokes, but then, fortunately, Malicia finally gives way on the screen to Maurice.

Even in the fairy-tale world where he lives, talking animals are as rare as in ours, but Maurice is also very quick-witted. He earns his living by offering the inhabitants of villages and towns to get rid of rats. Despite the generous payment, it is obvious that one cat, even an amazing one, cannot cope with their invasion, and then a guy named Keith enters the scene, who, just like the Pied Piper of Hammel, hypnotizes them with the sound of his pipe and takes them away, and sometimes even lures them into the river, where they drown safely. But Maurice has a little secret: the rats, it turns out, are also talking and are in cahoots with him and Keith, and they share the profits from their scam for everyone. What does the book about Mr. Rabbit have to do with it? And her rats were once found in a landfill and believed in the existence of a utopian world where animals walk on two legs, wear clothes and peacefully coexist with people. They hope to get there with enough money, and the cunning Maurice supports their faith, although he knows perfectly well that there is not a word of truth in the book.

Having collected a fee from the next naive villagers, the whole company goes to the city, which looks very promising for their business. But here’s the problem: it turns out that the rat-catchers have already been there and destroyed all the rodents, but the food continues to disappear, so real hunger reigns in the city. Maurice and the company decide to find out what the matter is, and get acquainted with the daughter of the local burgomaster Malicia – yes, the very one who turns out to be not only the narrator, but also the direct heroine of this story, about which she breaks the fourth wall again and again and betrays another stream of metacomments. Keith, of course, falls in love with her, but only because it is supposed to be so according to the law of the genre, and not because being in her company is at least somewhat easy and pleasant.

Emphasizing awareness of and playing with one’s own tropes and clichés is nothing new for animation. The success of Shrek and its sequels was largely built on this. But the first film of this franchise was released twenty-two years ago, when this was still a novelty, and most importantly, its creators still knew the measure, not turning an insistent wink at older viewers from seasoning into a main dish. In The Marvelous Maurice, however, the characters don’t say a word – or do anything at all – in their simplicity, nor are they charming or interesting enough to be taken with sympathy. There is an impressive antagonist here – the mysterious Rat King, but on the way to the final confrontation, the authors are constantly distracted by juggling religious and messianic allusions (yes, rats have their own prophet, and he and Maurice have an ideological conflict). Pratchett fans of all ages will certainly be pleased, but the rest of the cartoon will seem not at all as amazing as its creators.