TV and Film:The Amazing Maurice

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The Amazing Maurice
Promotional Poster
ASIN [1]
IMDB 10473036
First Broadcast TBA
Broadcast Channel Feature Film
Director(s) Toby Genkel, Florian Westermann
Producer(s) Julia Stuart (Sky), Emely Christians (Ulysses), Andrew Baker and Robert Chandler (Cantilever Media) and Rob Wilkins (Narrativia)
Writer(s) Terry Rossio
Starring TBA
Duration 85 minutes
Episodes 1
Series Children's books
Annotations Annotations for TV and Film:The Amazing Maurice
Notes
Preceded by The Abominable Snow Baby
Followed by '
All data relates to the UK home release.

The Amazing Maurice is an animated feature film adaptation of The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, produced by Cantilever Media and Ulysses Filmproduktion for Sky Cinema, in conjunction with Narrativia.

It is the first feature film adaptation of Terry Pratchett's works and the first to be originally screened in cinemas. It’s UK premiere was at the Manchester Animation Festival, though it's first broad release in the UK was on Sky Cinema's pay television network in December 2023. It was released worldwide in early 2023.

Blurb

Maurice, a streetwise cat, has the perfect money-making scam. He’s found a dumb-looking kid who plays a pipe, and his very own horde of rats – rats who are strangely educated, and literate, so Maurice can no longer think of them as “lunch”. And everyone knows the stories about rats and pipers... However, when Maurice and the rodents reach the stricken town of Bad Blintz, their little con goes down the drain. For someone there is playing a different tune. A dark, shadowy tune. Something very, very bad is waiting in the cellars. It’s not a game anymore. It’s a rat-eat-rat world down there and the educated rats must learn a new word...EVIL.

Differences from the novel

While the film is broadly faithful to the book, in order to fit the medium, the runtime and perhaps a broader (and younger) audience, many things are simplified. Here are some of the biggest changes.

  • The character of Hamnpork, and much of the subplot of the rats moving on from their old ways, are not in the film. (The group embrace the Mr Bunnsy inspired search for paradise.)
  • Maurice does not always hide his ability to talk. In the first scam at the start of the film, he takes a much more active role, directly talking to the village’s inhabitants about the rats and telling them “the Piper” is the solution. (One child in the crowd repeatedly points out that it’s a talking cat, establishing this is meant to be unusual, but the rest of the crowd take no notice.)
  • The rat catchers make the Rat King by accident, rather than deliberately as a masterwork. It controls them directly using greed and fear, rather than subtly influencing their minds. There’s also no mention of them using eight rats, causing this Rat King to be magically powerful; in this version all Rat Kings have “mind power”.
  • The Rat King controls a large number of rats inside a coat, scarf, hat and mittens, allowing it to masquerade as the “Boss Man” of the rat catchers. It doesn’t use the name “Spider”. When it lures in Dangerous Beans, it’s inside the Mayor’s office.
  • The Mayor is more suspicious of the rat catchers, suggesting that perhaps there’s a connection between the missing food and the rats they’ve supposedly eradicated, but is intimidated by the “Boss Man” and drops this line of questioning.
  • Clicky the clockwork mouse is magically alive, though this is played for laughs. It refuses to enter a trap when its scared, and later in the film shows up to save the day. In the finale, it is shown to have a family of clockwork mice.
  • The “real” Pied Piper in the film has a magic flute and lives in a cottage in the woods near Bad Blintz. Rather than arriving for a showdown with Keith, Malicia knows that his magical pipe is the only thing that can break the power of a Rat King, so they go looking for him to steal it. When he discovers them, he uses the pipe to make them walk into his oven. (In witch terms, he's gone a bit “Black Aliss”; Malicia says the situation is “so Hansel and Gretel”.) After they escape with his pipe he’s not seen again.
  • The rats become part of the town of Bad Blintz, turning it into a tourist attraction as in the book, but there’s no discussion with the Mayor about how it will all work; it's just part of the happy ending.
  • Much more of Malicia’s discussion of stories are about whether or not she and Keith will be a couple, and romance tropes in general. They kiss in the end, and Malicia says he’s a “great kisser, actually” during her final narration. (Both characters seem older in the film than in the book.)

Easter eggs

As well as being implicitly set on the Discworld (we see a drawing of the Disc on A’Tuin with the turtles, and “Unseen University of Ankh-Morpork” is explicitly mentioned), there are many references to Pratchett and the Discworld novels scattered throughout the film.

A few to look for:

  • Malicia has a copy of Twurp's Peerage on a lectern, and a life-sized statue of the Luggage.
  • There is a bust of Terry Pratchett in the Mayor’s office.
  • Rincewind and Twoflower (or at least two characters who greatly resemble them) turn up in Bad Blintz at the end; quite appropriate now it's a tourist attraction. (This wizard is also the one glimpsed dumping rubbish out of the literally Unseen University in a flashback.)

Cast

Tie-in Books

Several books and new covers were released to tie-in with the release of the film:

External Links

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