OK, let’s start with the negatives.
First, Ratatouille spins its wheels a little bit for the first 10 minutes.
Second, if you recall a movie called The Barefoot Executive, then you’ll realize that the story arc is hardly original (and The Barefoot Executive wasn’t either; see Cyrano de Bergerac). In that 1971 Disney movie, Kurt Russell played a young television network employee who learns that his girlfriend’s pet chimpanzee can accurately pick hit TV shows—and of course Russell passes off this ability as his own. At the basic story level, Ratatouille is The Barefoot Executive told from the perspective of the chimp.
That’s not really much of a bad thing, though. If Jerry Seinfeld and I both told the same joke, he’d still be a lot funnier than me. In the Ratatouille/The Barefoot Executive comparison, animation genius Brad Bird is the Seinfeld.
The first bad thing isn’t really noteworthy, either. It may leave you in doubt for a few minutes, but it’s a home run that looks like a line drive out until you realize it is in the second deck and still going up.
Photo © Disney Enterprises Inc & Pixar Animation Studios
The slow part is the introduction of Remy (Patton Oswalt from King of Queens) and his family of rats living a decent life on the garbage of a country cottage. That’s not good enough for Remy, though. He is a rat with an impeccable sense of smell, and watching the cottage owner’s TV (and reading her cookbooks) has given him a gourmand’s sense for mixing foods and flavors.
Of course, Remy’s interest in human comforts brings disaster on the whole group of rats and they end up dispersed in Paris, where one thing leads to another and Remy ends up playing puppet-master to Linguini (Lou Romano), a garbage boy at a formerly 5-star restaurant. No, no, I’m going to stop there. That’s all the plot summary I’m going to do as it is entirely worth your time to go and let it unfold upon you with minimal spoiling. There are no dead spots you need to be warned of; no stupidities that need to be called out.
Photo © Disney Enterprises Inc & Pixar Animation Studios
That is not to say it is a perfectly logical universe. After all, the rat can read, and pulling the right hair on the head can apparently cause the perfect flip of an omelet. Those, however, are quibbles that only matter when the movie stinks and are appreciated as beautiful gags when the movie is great. And this is a great movie.
The brilliance of Brad Bird is that he is a master storyteller who just happens to be working in the field of animation—and a master animator (at least in vision, since I have no idea what his actual animation skills are) who happens to be a phenomenal storyteller. After the slow initial setup, there isn’t a single wasted moment in a movie that is, by feature animation standards, on the long side. Every movement is important and every scene contributes to the whole. The narrative doesn’t break just because there was a gag too funny to pass up and it is completely unironic. There are no movie spoofs, no TV spoofs, no popular music montages. It is pure story, and once it has you it doesn’t let go until you’ve seen the last credit scroll by and you’re still just sitting there amazed at what you’ve seen.
Photo © Disney Enterprises Inc & Pixar Animation Studios
How good is the animation? Every morning on my way to work I ride a shuttle bus that also serves the Pixar Studio and I know there are at least a few employees on there every morning. Every day since I saw Ratatouille, I’ve had to resist the urge to just stand up on the bus and shout, “You Pixar people are amazing!” I do have some sense of dignity, after all. Without ever doing anything as noteworthy as the water effects in Finding Nemo or Sully’s fur in Monsters, Inc., Pixar has once again set the bar to new heights.
Though the humans are stylized, the entire environment is immersive and not once did I feel like I was watching anything less than a fully physical universe. Things fall right. Lighting is exactly perfect, motion and momentum and inertia are real physical laws.
Photo © Disney Enterprises Inc & Pixar Animation Studios
Though Bird doesn’t go with a no-name cast, it is mostly a B-list one and that also contributed to never being pulled out of the environment. Even with familiar voices like Ian Holm, Peter O’Toole, Brian Dennehy, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garofalo, and John Ratzenberger (even Brad Bird must keep some Pixar traditions) it wasn’t until reading the credits that I realized who I had been listening to.
The only threat I can imagine to the prospects for Ratatouille‘s box office health is that it just may play a little too old for a lot of family repeat viewings. There is a lot of action and sight gags, but how much is a 7-year-old going to care about (or understand) the world of fine dining and criticism?
Photo © Disney Enterprises Inc & Pixar Animation Studios
The movie had received a G rating and I think pretty much any parent can be comfortable with that. There are no language issues, the barest hint of sexuality, and beyond some understandable reactions to the presence of a rat in a restaurant kitchen, no violence. The most intense scene is a verbal confrontation with top food critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole), the movie’s secondary villain.
So it is safe for everybody and it may turn out your youngest are a bit too uninterested in the topics, but at least they’ll have been exposed to great art.
Ratatouille at El Capitan
by Lisa Perkis
Hollywood’s El Capitan Theatre, in addition to showing Ratatouille, also has a new stage show. Called “Cookin’ in the Kitchen,” it features traditional Disney characters as well as some Pixar all-stars such as Woody and Jessie, and Mr. & Mrs. Incredible. The show features little bits of Disney songs connected with food in some way, like “Spoonful of Sugar” from Mary Poppins, “Rumbly in my Tumbly” from Winnie the Pooh and in a strange addition, “Trashing the Camp” from Tarzan.
Remy merchandise on display at the El Capitan Theater. Photo by Lisa Perkis
The dance cast is professional and energetic, and they bring up kids from the audience during the Woody-and-Jessie segment of the show. The response from the kids in the audience was enthusiastic, especially then new Pixar characters Remy and Emil joined the cast at the end of the show and ran through the audience. The show isn’t a must-see by any means, but it does serve to set the mood for the movie, and the kids enjoyed it thoroughly.
A note for parents
Spoiler warning: This note contains plot spoilers!
Ratatouille is appropriate for all ages; however, I noticed younger children getting restless during several of the dramatic, “talky” parts of the film. My own daughter fell to collecting confetti off the floor from the stage show when the action slowed.
In addition, the ending was confusing to my kids. Even my older daughter didn’t comprehend what led to the final scene. She said that the epilogue voice-over “was kind of long and boring,” but once we summarized what it meant she figured it all out.
There is a comic scene with an older woman shooting off a gun at the rats (no one gets hurt), and a store window is shown with dead rats caught in traps that is a bit intense, but overall, the movie is fine for just about everybody.
- Ratatouille is a Disney-Pixar release.
- Wide release June 29.
- Directed and written by Brad Bird
- Starring Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Janeane Garofalo, Brad Garrett, Peter O’Toole
- Running Time: 110 minutes
- Rated G
- Alex Rating: 10 out of 10
