Rats! 'Ratatouille' tepid
Disney/Pixar animated film lacks emotional whammy
By Phil Villarreal
Pvillarreal@azstarnet.com
Tucson, Arizona | Published: 06.28.2007
A rodent in the kitchen may not be known as a sign of quality in the restaurant world, but Remy the Rat is out to change all that.
In Pixar's "Ratatouille," a film with functional, not quite mind-blowing art style, the talking, blue-haired vermin (voiced by Patton Oswalt) pursues the decidedly un-ratlike career path of a gourmet chef. He watches cooking shows, teaches himself to read recipes and rails against the way his compatriots wolf down food without pausing to appreciate its nuances. So dedicated is Remy that when a human destroys his colony and chases every rat away, Remy doubles back to snag a cookbook.
As luck and the anything-goes world of cartoon movie scripts have it, Remy floats through the sewers using his book as a raft, then surfaces at a restaurant created by his hero, Gusteau (Brad Garrett), who pops into Remy's head as a chatty figment of his imagination. Gusteau dispenses helpful pointers on how to ingratiate himself into the rat-ist cooking world.
Remy finds his "in" thanks to another fantastic stroke of luck/contrivance, which finds him teaming up with Linguini (Lou Romano), an up-and-coming chef whom Remy coaches by tugging on his hair like a marionette. Linguini tolerates Remy's pulling because it allows him to rise up the ranks and hopefully persuade stuffy dining critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole) to approve of his fare and restore the restaurant to its past stature.
"Ratatouille" is a lot to swallow, both literally and figuratively, but nevertheless is moving in its earnest underdog way. The script does little to placate kids, dispensing with songs or slapstick and taking its ridiculous story seriously in an effort to appeal to grown-ups.
Food Network addicts of any age will get the most out of the movie, which is a love letter to the act of culinary creation.
The film is more of the same from director Brad Bird, who started in traditional animation with "The Iron Giant" (1999) and moved on to Pixar for "The Incredibles" (2004). Both films, as well as "Ratatouille," are wildly praised, and although I enjoyed them well enough, I wasn't among the worshippers.
I find Bird's work entertaining yet too antiseptic and vacant to be truly inspiring. Give me something that packs an emotional whammy — "Toy Story," "Finding Nemo," any of the ancient Disney classics or works of Hayao Miyazaki — over a Bird film any day. The wild, devoted praise afforded his solid yet tepid films puzzles me. It's as though society is playing a joke that everyone but me and a few others are in on. I smell a "Ratatouille."
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