Pixar Playlist #8 - Ratatouille

Ladies and Gentlemen, whether you like it or not, the Pixar Playlist

Didn’t take long for Brad Bird to come back, did it? Today we’re looking at Ratatouille

This originally started as the brainchild of Jan Pinkava in 2000, she went through several drafts but none everyone was absolutely happy with. Bob Peterson was brought in and given control of the story for a while, but ultimately left to work on UP, a film that we will get to soon. Brad Bird, after his success on the Incredibles was brought in and was quick about changing things, certain designs changed to fit his vision.

In terms of animation, there were challenges here, a small scene in the sewers had more complex water animation than Finding Nemo did and there was also the challenge of making appetising looking food using CGI. The crew did their research in culinary arts, including taking classes and dining around the restaurants, they also had to learn about how a restaurant kitchen works and Brad Bird even interned at one for a time. As per usual, Pixar goes above and beyond in their research.

The film had a $150m budget, the highest Pixar budget so far (although $150-$200m will become the new normal following the Disney buyout) and made a par for the course Box Office of $620m, it didn’t do so well in merchandising, unfortunately. It is a critical darling with a 96% Rotten Tomatoes rating, with an average score of 8.47/10, audiences also took a liking to it, as it has an 87% audience score with an average 4.13/5, but do I follow this trend, well…

Remy (Patton Oswalt) is a rat with heightened senses of smell and taste, whilst the other rats are content eating garbage, Remy longs for the flavours of cooked food, idolising famed Chef Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garret) who he found out died after his restaurant was savaged by food critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole)

After an incident that saw him separated from his family, he finds salvation of Alfredo Linguine (Lou Romano) a struggling wannabe chef that it turns out is related to Gusteau. Remy knows how to cook and Linguine has the human hands to make that dream a reality, can they work together and keep their dream alive?

OK, so let’s get my negatives out of the way first. As a child, I imagine a concept like this wouldn’t bother you but it bothers me, it bothers me a lot. Rats in a human kitchen is disgusting, in a professional kitchen even more so. I found it exceptionally difficult to watch and think objectively about the rest of them because of this. It doesn’t help that the rats aren’t anthropomorphised, this was a conscious choice by Brad bird to favour realism and whilst I have some respect for that, it might well have been the wrong choice.

It also hasn’t aged well when it comes to clichés. Remy is your typical outsider who can do something very well but it’s not allowed by his clan, you’ve seen it many times before. One thing I can say is that his father isn’t openly hostile to him like they can be in other films of this kind and the reasons of avoiding interactions with humans make a good deal of sense, but it’s not like that isn’t the case with most of this cliché.

Then there’s obvious liar revealed cliché with Linguine and Remy, mostly focused around Chef Skinner (Ian Holm) and Colette Tatou (Janeane Garofalo) both of whom have to put up with Linguine’s physical antics whilst Remy is literally pulling his strings. Another bit of slight uniqueness is that Remy never directly talks to Linguine, their communication is always non-verbal.

One thing they may have missed with the research is that there is a difference between owning a restaurant and being the head chef. Thanks to some physical comedy, Linguine finds out about him being Gusteau’s son and becomes owner of the restaurant, much to Skinner’s chargin, he could still have been kept on as head Chef.

I don’t know what to make of Anton Ego. He has some of the best dialogue in the movie but he’s also the definition of a stereotypical snooty critic. I wonder if Disney had a recent critical flop they wanted to vent against. Then again, Anton Ego actually ended up saving the day in the end so maybe I’ve got this all wrong.

OK, I think that’s my negatives out of the way, I do have some positives. The animation is great as you’d expect from Pixar. You can tell they did their research and the food actually looks appetising as they’d hoped. The water animation in the sewer is great stuff too, and the story does have some amusing physical comedy.

But the one thing this film really has in its favour is the voice acting. Patton Oswalt does a great job infusing likeability into a character that does some pretty bad stuff in the second act. All the voice actors I’ve previously mentioned do fantastically in their roles, with some great dialogue making amusing banter and comedy. The physical stuff is good too, although I wish there was a bit more of it, comedy in general actually, might’ve helped make the premise easier to swallow.

Ratatouille is a film with solid animation and when it does its jokes right, they really land, it’s unfortunate this premise both lends itself to a lot of clichés and a lot of retching.

#1 The Incredibles

#2 Finding Nemo

#3 Toy Story 2

#4 Toy Story

#5 Monsters Inc

#6 Ratatouille

#7 Cars

#8 A Bug’s Life