I wonder if the kids growing up over the past decade will realize how lucky they were to be children in the era of Pixar? My childhood ended just as Toy Story came out, and by the time A Bug's Life was released, I was already at the age where "kid's movies" were beneath me. It really wasn't until The Incredibles that I was mature enough to see Pixar movies as more than just children's entertainment. Now, we all have those movies we grew up with that we look back on with fondness, but often that fondness has more to do with our being kids than the actual quality of the films. I somehow doubt Flight of the Navigator, D.A.R.Y.L., or The Great Mouse Detective really hold up well. Yet for 12 years, Pixar have consistently brought us the best family films. These are films that anyone can enjoy, regardless of age. I hope that when the kids of today are older, they will be able to see that the difference between Ratatouille and Shrek the Third is like the difference between Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Rock-A-Doodle.Ratatouille is a complex message wrapped in a simple premise. Remy the rat knows that he can be a great chef if given a chance. After getting separated from his family, he finds himself in the restaurant of his recently deceased idol, Gusteau the Chef. From his perch, he witnesses the new garbage boy, Linguini, attempting to fix a soup he spilled. Linguini knows nothing about cooking and is clearly ruining the soup, so Remy intervenes and fixes it, only to be caught. Linguini takes Remy to the river to dispose of him, but realizes that Remy can understand him. Not only that, but Remy could be Linguini's ticket to cooking success. The two team-up and Linguini quickly becomes the most renowned new chef in Paris. But his boss, Skinner, knows something is amiss, and he won't rest until he finds out what.
The film focuses greatly on following your dreams, as well as examining prejudices. If Remy really is a better chef than any human, should he be allowed to cook, in spite of the fact that he is a rat? It's an interesting question, and one that doesn't come with as simple of a solution as one might expect from an animated film. This isn't meant to be some magical rat that can talk; he's just a regular rat that you might find in your basement, and he happens to understand cooking. As such, the film treats him as we might treat a regular rat, so the ending is satisfyingly true to life, yet not a downer, either. The film never tries to tell us how we should feel about our prejudices, only trying to open up our mind to the idea of how our prejudices work. It's really rather beautiful.
Director Brad Bird grounds the film very much in reality. As I mentioned, this is just a normal rat. He can't speak English, so he and Linguini can't actually converse. Yes, he can understand English, but it's treated in a fairly realistic manner. We'd never expect our pets to start talking to us, but we do get the sense that they can understand us sometimes. Remy can talk to other rats, however, and he is voiced by Patton Oswalt. The voice work in general in this film is another example of why Pixar is so great. Aside from Oswalt, I did not recognize a single voice. So color me surprised to find such actors as Will Arnett, Peter O'Toole, Brain Dennehy, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garafalo, and Ian Holm in the cast list. Pixar makes a real effort to find actors who fit the characters, not big names who can sell a movie. These actors fit their parts so perfectly, I never once thought "Will Arnett sure is being funny" like I might have thought about Eddie Murphy in Shrek. This only helps us to become absorbed into the world of the film.
And oh, what a world it is. Bird directs this film with such deftness that you forget it's animated. The camera swoops and swerves. It peeks in through windows, and down through holes. It all feels like a living, breathing world with things constantly going on outside of the frame. The animation itself compliments that world wonderfully, and I doubt there has been a better looking CG film yet made. It's not enough they get the fur on the rats right, they have to get the constant heart beat as well (watch Remy and you'll notice his little chest is always rapidly beating). Pixar still has trouble getting humans to not look creepy, however. The eyes in particular look like glass eyes. Yet that is a small quibble for such a gorgeous film.
Of all the Pixar films, though, this may be the least accessible to kids. It's about two hours long and the story is filed with references to things I doubt kids would care about (French cuisine, the process of critical food reviews, etc). Also, it's not very funny compared to other animated films. It's much more about the story and the world, and I fear the younger ones will not care. But for anyone who is old enough to enjoy a film beyond just jokes, the story is enough to delight.
People always like to rank the Pixar films, in spite of the fact that it's like comparing the tallest skyscrapers. Yeah, one might be the tallest, but they're all so tall and separated by only a few feet in height, it feels slightly pointless. If The Incredibles and the Toy Story duo are the best, then Ratatouille falls in just underneath. But again, that's not saying much, as they are all pretty amazing. Really, if you want to have a good time and be taken into a beautiful and fully realized world, you could do a lot worse than this delightful adventure.
As always with Pixar, Ratatouille is also accompanied by a short film. This one is called Lifted, and it's about an alien space ship attempting to abduct an unsuspecting human. While not quite as good as last year's One Man Band, it is still quite cute. As per usual, there is no speaking in the short, instead relying only on the ability of the animators to create an engaging visual story. These short films give one a lot of hope for next summer's Wall-E, Pixar's rumored attempt at making a largely dialogue-free animated film. It's nice to see that they're never satisfied in giving us the same old thing every time, unlike their counterparts at Dreamworks.
