Every year a new soup is unveiled by royal chef Andre (Kevin Kline) but disaster strikes when an inquisitive rat called Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman) falls into the soup, causing the Queen to die.

Consumed by grief, the King outlaws all soup-making and banishes vermin from Dor. However, plucky mouse Despereaux (Matthew Broderick) risks everything to save his friend Roscuro. There is little dramatic momentum to move this story along and the glum and gloomy characters fail to lift spirits.

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A modest little comic adventure, The Stone of Destiny (Cert PG) tells the story of how four university students in 1950 hatched a plot to steal back the legendary coronation stone of Scottish Kings, a potent symbol of independence (eventually returned North to Edinburgh Castle in 1996).

Despite having little money and even less experience, the young adventurers broke into Westminster Abbey in the early hours of Christmas morning and "liberate" the symbolic piece of stone fitted into a wooden chair. The exploit didn't exactly go to plan but it caught the Scottish public imagination

American actor turned director Charles Martin Smith has adapted the book by the ringleader Ian Hamilton, who is played by Charlie Cox. Kate Mara from Brokeback Mountain, Stephen McCole and Ciaron Kelly play the other conspirators and there are walk-on parts for such Scots luminaries as Billy Boyd, Robert Carlyle and Peter Mullan, who may reflect it is not their finest hour.



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