Current film viewing: The Amazing Maurice (2022)

[vivdunstan]

We just finished watching this tonight - though it’s only about 90 minutes long it took us 2 nights to watch it all, almost a week apart.

I liked it a lot, though it makes a lot of changes to the original Terry Pratchett story. The animation is strong, with some really good visuals and dramatic set pieces. And some great voice acting.

I’m still not sure about an extremely well fed Maurice, whose character is also tweaked. And the film’s added meta layer of Malicia telling a framing story is a bit overwhelming, though Emilia Clarke performs it well.

However overall it’s good stuff. And I’m glad to see it retains the darker elements of this novel. It’s definitely one of Terry Pratchett’s most hard hitting books, even though it’s ostensibly a children’s novel.

And there is a wonderful after credits moment.

I’d definitely be interested in more Pratchett novels done in an animated form.

Comments

[a_cubed]

While doing my LLM at reading I was of course interacting a bit more socially with the other students than I generally did with students in Systems Engineering where I was a lecturer. I remember a discussion of The Amazing Maurice with one of the others. They claimed it wasn't a children's book. After a bit of back and forth I'm afraid I resorted to proof by authority when they asked me why I thought it was a children's book. "Because PTerry said so." While I had met him, we didn't have that particular conversation but I recall him speaking at a convention about his children's work including the Nomes and Maurice and him saying he had plans for more Discworld children's books (the Tiffany series, as it turned out).

[vivdunstan]

Pterry's word is of course final. But I do honestly think it's not what is commonly regarded as a children's story nowadays. Sure in the overall ideas and all it's like a children's story, but it goes far far darker in places than children's stories do now. It's much more akin to an old style traditional European folk tale, before they were seriously sanitised and marketed more at children. When I was posting about it last night on Facebook I did warn that I don't think it's suitable for very little ones to watch. Because ostensibly you'd think based on the marketing it is. But then it goes to some really really grim places.