THE TALE OF DESPEREAUX Kate DiCamillo’s 2003 children’s novel about a big-eared mouse with an inspiring case of shining-knight envy is one of the finest expositions of loss, grief, reactive vengeance and forgiveness for kids. I was looking forward to seeing what Sylvain Chomet, who made the fabulously weird The Triplets of Belleville, would bring to this great yarn, which trusts small children enough to understand the concept of mixed motives and empathize with hurt rats who hurt in return. Alas, for murky reasons, Chomet was bounced from the project shortly after it was green-lit; only his production designer, Evgeni Tomov, remained. So The Tale of Despereaux looks good, in a washed-out, Flemish-masters sort of way. Otherwise, screenwriter Gary Ross, who made the cornball Seabiscuit, and directors Sam Fell and Rob Stevenhagen have seen fit to turn this delightful tale into, of all things, an intermittently vicious CGI action movie in which the mouse (voiced by Matthew Broderick), who refuses to cower, gets dumped down a well into a dungeon and shoved into a terrifying gladiatorial battle with a gruesomely drawn cat before he can even start saving the world from darkness and gloom. Clumsily wedged in like a TV commercial between deafening stunts, the emotional storytelling sinks without a trace, leaving you with only one flawed character to cling to — a morally challenged Cabbage-Patch–like servant (wittily voiced by Tracey Ullman), who learns that every girl is somebody’s princess. (Citywide) (Ella Taylor)
TUNNEL RATS Changes in the German tax laws have changed the way that infamous director Uwe Boll (BloodRayne, Alone in the Dark) does business. No longer able to rely on tax write-offs to raise capital, he’s been forced to go back to basics ... and against all odds, this approach seems to be working. Tunnel Rats, not based on a video game, not featuring crappy CG effects, and not featuring big-name actors in ridiculously miscast roles (Michael Pare is the closest thing to a familiar face), is easily Boll’s best film to date. Admittedly, in some quarters, “best Boll film” is a phrase roughly akin to “least unpleasant diaper change,” but Tunnel Rats really does evince some actual talent. A Vietnam war movie focused primarily on the underground tunnels dug by the Viet Cong — and the unfortunately naive American troops who found themselves fighting inside said passageways — it’s an effectively shot, ultraviolent, ultranihilistic, moderately claustrophobic vision seemingly inspired equally by We Were Soldiers and The Descent. Only when the soldiers open their mouths and engage in overly accented casual conversation does the Boll badness factor become evident; this, however, is rare enough to give one an actual sliver of hope for the eight other films that the Notorious U.W.E. apparently has on his slate for the next two years. (Downtown Independent) (Luke Y. Thompson)
WHERE GOD LEFT HIS SHOES Undercard boxer Frank Diaz (John Leguizamo) is a ring slickster whose lack of jaw and heart has kept his looks while eroding his self-worth. He’s supporting a family on one of those “one paycheck away from the street” budgets, when that one paycheck doesn’t come. From here, Where God Left His Shoes overlaps with classics of hapless patheticism: a little Bicycle Thief, a little “no room at the inn.” The film’s body takes place on Christmas Eve, as Frank drags his preadolescent stepson (David Castro) under turnstiles, borough to borough, trying against deadline to find a job that will satisfy the family’s application for a new apartment. Leguizamo, working at a scramble, gets more onscreen traction than in recent memory; the father-son rapport is bullyish-fraternal, including raunch ribbing about girls and schoolyard sex-ed (“You can’t go raw-dog these days”). Director Salvatore Stabile, a Brooklyn native with a résumé in TV production, knows how to line up a permit and scout out perfect South Brooklyn Italian manors and melancholic intersections. He gets interesting scenes, too — a Halloween eviction, the backing down of a suspiciously kid-friendly cot-jockey at the homeless shelter — though the movie’s vérité is diluted by a cozy, adult-contemporary empathy with those less fortunate, which left me hearing “Another Day in Paradise.” (Grande 4-Plex) (Nick Pinkerton)
GO THE YELLOW HANDKERCHIEF Director Udayan Prasad’s post-Katrina road movie is not a remake of Yôji Yamada’s 1977 winner of the first-ever Japanese Academy Award for Best Picture, nor is it tied as tightly to Tony Orlando’s oak tree as it is to “Going Home,” the Pete Hamill short story that inspired all of the above. (Of course, Hamill stole from folklore, so go stare at the sun: ain’t nothing new under it.) Affecting in his muted mien of regret, William Hurt plays a freshly paroled Louisiana ex-con with a history of violence — as Maria Bello can attest in parallel flashbacks — who hitches a lift and briefly becomes a father figure to a makeshift family of self-perceived misfits. Behind the wheel is a socially retarded, redneck eccentric (Savage Grace’s Eddie Redmayne) with a dire need for Ritalin and a hard-on for the other drifter, a too-trusting teen romantic (Twilight’s Kristen Stewart) with daddy issues and an awkward surge of budding sexuality. It’s the mismatched-ensemble-together-in-loneliness formula that Sundance dreams are made of, and the predictables add up: that title image signaling hope from afar; a run-in with the po-po, and occasionally the next line of dialogue. Still, Hurt’s revealed criminal past could’ve been cringe-worthy, and it’s not. All three leads are solidly convincing in their candor. And Oscar-winning cinematographer Chris Menges (The Mission) shoots the hell out of the swampy South to make for a nontoxic diversion. (Town Center 5) (Aaron Hillis)
