Despite being one of the best selling and most acclaimed authors, up until now Terry Pratchett has never had any film adaptations. There have been a handful of TV specials (including Hogfather and Colour of Magic) and of course the recent Good Omens adaptation. However the big screen has always eluded the Discworld. This is not due to a lack of trying with both Sam Raimi and Terry Gilliam attempting to adapt his works for the big screen, but no productions have ever moved forwards. In some ways it's not too hard to see why. His Discworld series is so expansive and interconnected that it would be tough to adapt some of his popular stories like Mort for all audiences not familiar with his works. Along with this most stories usually have an impressive scale that would be more difficult to pull off. I mean, where would one even find a turtle suitably large enough to support 4 elephants?
So maybe that is why it makes sense that The Amazing Maurice would be his first to be adapted. It's Pratchett's first story written for children and whilst it takes place in the Discworld, it doesn't connect to the same extent some of his other stories taking place largely in a single town. It's a very loose "retelling" of the Pied Piper tale told by two separate narrators. The first narrator is the Amazing Maurice (Hugh Laure), a talking cat who leads a group of talking rats and a young boy named Keith (Himesh Patel) pretending to be the Pied Piper (the real Pied Piper is obviously a madman living in the middle of nowhere due to having cooked a town full of children). They all travel between towns pretending to infest the town with rats and then luring the "vermin" away. The second narrator is Malicia (Emilia Clarke), the Mayor's daughter who has spent her lifetime obsessing with books and story tropes. When she stumbles across Maurice and his group of talking rats, she sees an opportunity to get her own story moving and forces them to go on an adventure.
In terms of adapting someone like Pratchett who always had fun at prodding and satirising story tropes, Terry Rossio actually seems like he's well qualified for the job. He's got a good history of playing with story conventions in with his previous work on Aladdin, The Road to El Dorado and Shrek. And that talent does shine through with this screenplay. I don't think that it captures everything in Pratchett's writing, there are just too many aspects of Pratchett's style that were unique to the page that don't transfer to a different medium. But it still captures a lot of Pratchett's quick witted style along with a level of fourth wall breaking akin to something like Fleabag with characters regularly having catch up conversations with the audience.
There is also a cast full of charismatic characters being voiced by actors with great comedic timing like Emilia Clarke and David Thewlis. Hugh Laurie is especially good as the titular Maurice switching between a deceitful conman (or concat?) and a reluctant hero delivering some of the best lines of the film. This includes one of my favourite lines when they are discussing the ethics of scamming the towns: "But trickery is what humans are all about! They're so keen on tricking each other they elect governments to do it for them!"
Like a lot of animated films they have tried to emulate the look of a modern Disney film. Given the lower budget that the film was working with, they do a decent job at capturing this style. But because of this approach a lot of the character designs don't really stand out too much. This is with the key exception of the villain the Boss Man. His design stands out as something sinister more akin to characters like No-Face in Spirited Away or the Summerween trickster from Gravity Falls. Plus the animators do include a hdnful of Discworld easter eggs that fans will enjoy.
Overall, there are limitations to what this adaptation is able to accomplish. When you're adapting someone like Pratchett it is a challenge to condense even some of his more straightforward stories into a shorter medium and some elements are lost in the transfer from book to film. But it still captures the charm of his characters, his fun dialogue and still delivers enough strong laughs to make this a worthwhile recommendation.
So maybe that is why it makes sense that The Amazing Maurice would be his first to be adapted. It's Pratchett's first story written for children and whilst it takes place in the Discworld, it doesn't connect to the same extent some of his other stories taking place largely in a single town. It's a very loose "retelling" of the Pied Piper tale told by two separate narrators. The first narrator is the Amazing Maurice (Hugh Laure), a talking cat who leads a group of talking rats and a young boy named Keith (Himesh Patel) pretending to be the Pied Piper (the real Pied Piper is obviously a madman living in the middle of nowhere due to having cooked a town full of children). They all travel between towns pretending to infest the town with rats and then luring the "vermin" away. The second narrator is Malicia (Emilia Clarke), the Mayor's daughter who has spent her lifetime obsessing with books and story tropes. When she stumbles across Maurice and his group of talking rats, she sees an opportunity to get her own story moving and forces them to go on an adventure.
In terms of adapting someone like Pratchett who always had fun at prodding and satirising story tropes, Terry Rossio actually seems like he's well qualified for the job. He's got a good history of playing with story conventions in with his previous work on Aladdin, The Road to El Dorado and Shrek. And that talent does shine through with this screenplay. I don't think that it captures everything in Pratchett's writing, there are just too many aspects of Pratchett's style that were unique to the page that don't transfer to a different medium. But it still captures a lot of Pratchett's quick witted style along with a level of fourth wall breaking akin to something like Fleabag with characters regularly having catch up conversations with the audience.
There is also a cast full of charismatic characters being voiced by actors with great comedic timing like Emilia Clarke and David Thewlis. Hugh Laurie is especially good as the titular Maurice switching between a deceitful conman (or concat?) and a reluctant hero delivering some of the best lines of the film. This includes one of my favourite lines when they are discussing the ethics of scamming the towns: "But trickery is what humans are all about! They're so keen on tricking each other they elect governments to do it for them!"
Like a lot of animated films they have tried to emulate the look of a modern Disney film. Given the lower budget that the film was working with, they do a decent job at capturing this style. But because of this approach a lot of the character designs don't really stand out too much. This is with the key exception of the villain the Boss Man. His design stands out as something sinister more akin to characters like No-Face in Spirited Away or the Summerween trickster from Gravity Falls. Plus the animators do include a hdnful of Discworld easter eggs that fans will enjoy.
Overall, there are limitations to what this adaptation is able to accomplish. When you're adapting someone like Pratchett it is a challenge to condense even some of his more straightforward stories into a shorter medium and some elements are lost in the transfer from book to film. But it still captures the charm of his characters, his fun dialogue and still delivers enough strong laughs to make this a worthwhile recommendation.