Movie Review: Ratatouille

I'm a few months late reviewing Ratatouille but it took me a while to see it. The Incredibles is my favorite Pixar film so I had high hopes since it was also written and directed by Brad Bird. I found Ratatouille to be fun but not particularly funny.

Remy is a rat with a remarkable sense of taste which means he doesn't care for the typical rat diet of garbage. He and his clan live at a French country home owned by an old woman. She watches cooking shows and Remy learns about the great chef Auguste Gusteau and reads his cookbook, Anyone Can Cook. After leaving the country, Remy finds himself alone in Paris and stumbles upon Gusteau's formerly 5 star restaurant. Gusteau had died after a bad review and loss of a star (causing the loss of another star). Alfredo Linguini is a gawky kid looking for a job in the kitchen now run by Gusteau's former sous-chef Skinner now trying to get rich off Gusteau's name. Linguini is in a kitchen but knows nothing about cooking, Remy can cook but can't be in the kitchen. They work together and Skinner is suspicious of his new surprise star.

The movie covers a lot of themes. Remy has to learn to believe in himself and do what he loves while balancing his family responsibilities. He also has to work hard to merely survive in man's world, let alone cook in a kitchen surreptitiously. There are even some racial overtones as humans seem to just despise rats. The plot also goes further than I expected which meant I left the theater pleasantly surprised. I also like the beginning in the country, but I had problems with the middle. I think my problem was with Linguini. He succeeded because of Remy but not for anything he really did himself. I just wasn't rooting for him I was rooting for Remy. Not liking the main character was my problem with Cars so I'm sorry to see this in two Pixar films.

I was impressed with voice acting. During the film I didn't recognize any voice and in fact didn't even think about it. It was only afterwards that I found out Brad Garrett was Gusteau, Ian Holm was Skinner, Janeane Garofalo was Colette and Peter O'Toole was Anton Ego. Nice job of supporting the film and not individual celebrity.

There were a few sequences tried to do for taste what Fantasia did for sound. I think they were pretty successful at showing imagery for flavors and then combining them into something more, but they were short and I would have liked more For example, when the customers were eating or when Remy was cooking.

Some friends commented they had a hard time with swarms of rats, particularly in kitchens. I honestly found these to be some of the most fun scenes. I also think Pixar achieved new heights in animation, getting the movements of the rats down perfectly.

This was a fun film and it probably hurt that I saw it with very few people in the theater. Still it's not in the league of The Incredibles or Finding Nemo or even Monster's Inc.

I also finally saw the Pixar short Lifted in the theater. It's a very fun short. Alien abduction as passing your driver's exam with a really bad computer interface. Very clever.