ClubHooligan.com - Burning it up at both ends

Web posted July 5, 2007

'Ratatouille' serves up the fun

By Chester Duke Carson

Courtesy of pixar/disney

Cheese it: Remy the rat, from Pixar's "Ratatouille," gets into a jam. The most recent jaw-dropping effort from Disney is more than just a kid's film.

There are precious few things one can count on in life: sunshine in SoCal, rain in Juneau and solid films from Disney/Pixar. "Ratatouille" (pronounced Rat-a-too-ee) is just the latest proof of the last one.

Ratatouille is not the main character's name or the place he lives. Ratatouille is a dish, just for your information. Our hero's name is Remy (voiced by comedian Patton Oswalt, a name I couldn't quite dig up until the credits finally rolled), an obsessive-compulsive clean freak who yearns to cook. There wouldn't normally be anything wrong with this except for the fact he is, well, a disgusting rat. I'm not being harsh, either. After all, Remy's father agrees. Rats hang out with other rats and eat garbage, darn it!

You know the drill: Remy isn't supposed to go near the wretched humans, but his disdain for stealing and eating trash inevitably leads him to a human kitchen. He is discovered, which leads to his entire family being chased out of their home and all of a sudden Remy is on his own in big, lonely Paris.

Movie Review

'Ratatouille'

Rating: ★★★

Starring: Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Lou Romano, Brian Dennehy and Peter O'Toole.

Director: Brad Bird.

Parent's guide: G.

Running time: 1 hour, 50 mins.

The story is fairly formulaic (rat gets separated from group; rat meets boy; boy realizes rat can cook; boy and rat team up; things go well; things go bad; things end well), but the rest of the "Ratatouille" production is done so perfectly that the formula works.

In fact, on the whole, "Ratatouille" feels geared much more toward the 18-plus demographic than kids 10 and under. There are plenty of funny moments, but very few designed to make an 8-year-old giggle. My guess is this is the main reason behind the relatively low box office opening ($47 million) for a Pixar project.

That said, there is still plenty for the wee ones to appreciate. The animation is more realistic than ever. It is easy to forget at times that what you're seeing on screen is not real. Paris' cityscape, the kitchen, the rats - they all look real. It's borderline ridiculous, really. The one thing the animators have yet to conquer, and maybe they never will, is humans. Frankly, I'm glad. The animation is getting so good that we're not that far away from going to a cartoon and not being able to tell it's a cartoon. Wouldn't that kind of defeat the point?

There's also a good villain (Skinner) who is thankfully more funny than scary. I, for one, to this day find Ursula and Cruella de Vil way too frightening. Skinner, though, is a nasty, angry, little Frenchman who grows more and more paranoid about the rat, (Remy) which apparently only he can see. If it's possible for an animated character to steal scenes like real actors do, Skinner does it. In the third act, an overly gloomy food critic serves as a sort of replacement villain, but I risk playing spoiler if I divulge too much about him.

Finally, the message in "Ratatouille" is a good one: You can do anything, no matter who you are. It doesn't get any cheesier than that, I know. But who better to deliver such cheese than rats?

Bottom line:

It's sunny again today in SoCal. I'm guessing it's raining again today in Juneau (not yesterday, mind you, as it is a rule that it does not rain on the Fourth of July in J-town). And once again, Disney/Pixar has produced a film the whole family can enjoy.