The talking rats have a pretty good racket. They travel; they “infest” a town. Maurice -the talking cat- convinces the villagers to pay a premium for a magical exterminator and when they do *lo and behold* Keith (voice of Himesh Patel) shows up with a pipe and “drives them out.” A small sackful of coins later, everybody wins … except for the villagers that is.
But they don’t know they didn’t win. The best scams leave the victims felling relieved and not exploited.
Yes, the cat can talk. Yes, the mice can talk. Is this the best use of talking animals? Pulling off small-town scams and skipping from place to place before anybody notices? Probably not. So what happens when the town already has a scam going? That’s where the plot starts for real.
The walled-off city of Bad Blintz has no food. Every time a resident sits to eat a meal, it just disappears. Apparently, this isn’t magic, just expert thievery while taking advantage of pretty careless residents. Hard to pull off the “infestation” scam when there’s no food to infest. Maurice (Hugh Laurie) and Keith and the rats ought to move on … and they would have gone, too, if it wasn’t for those meddling kids.
Well meddling kid, Malicia (Emilia Clarke), the mayor’s daughter who seems to exist both inside and outside 
our story. Malicia is our narrator and has no problem with fourth wall breaks, but she’s also in it for adventure or love or maybe both; hence, she’s only too happy to enlist Keith and his chatty mammals to help solve the Bad Blintz plague.
It’s hard to root for swindlers, even if they are cute talking rats. We tell ourselves it’s OK because the real villains are the ones starving Bad Blintz to death. Come to think of it, I bet this is all much better in print. Terry Pratchett books have a tendency to underwhelm on the screen and The Amazing Maurice is no exception. For one thing, Maurice ain’t all that Amazing, knowwhatI’msayin’? The greatest innovation in this tale is a ghastly enforcer known as Boss Man. We’re pretty sure he’s behind everything … but how does this faceless evil have such a death grip on the city?
The Amazing Maurice is a little funny and little scary and little better than bad children’s films, but I’m not going to the mat for this thing. I’d sooner see another screening of Wish Dragon or something along those lines. I’m not saying Disney is the answer here, but Disney would have found away to make The Amazing Maurice seem at least a little more Amazing.
The once was a cat named Maurice
Who could –quite literally-speak his peace
Yet he spent all his time
Doing petty crime
With great power comes an order to desist and cease
Rated PG, 93 Minutes
Director: Toby Genkel
Writer: Terry Rossio
Genre: Next level anthropomorphism
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Talking cats
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Rat kings
