Review: Ratatouille
Ratatouille, the new offering from Pixar Studios, follows the misadventures of Parisian rat Remy, who wants to be a Parisian chef. He must do so in secret, as neither his sewer-dwelling clan nor the human gastronomes would approve, but, buoyed by the memory of the beloved Chef Gusteau, he perseveres, conspiring with the young human Linguine, who can’t cook at all, but at least looks like the right species, and needs the job. Many of the jokes in the film revolve around Remy piloting Linguine about the kitchen, tugging on his hair like a puppeteer does the strings of a marionette while both try to avoid spilling the literal and figurative beans.
Actually, pretty much the whole movie revolves around this slapstick. Although other threads weave through the plot—evil Chef Skinner’s plot to steal Gusteau’s restaurant and reputation, romance with the passionate assistant chef Colette, the resurrection of Gusteau’s name in the eyes of the imperious food critic Anton Ego—Ratatouille is, at base, a buddy movie, with Remy and Linguine the point of contact between the mutually hostile rat and human cultures.
The presentation of these two cultures is decidedly unequal, with rats coming out much the better. Remy may argue with his father, but the rats commit no actual villainy to compare with Skinner’s, Remy’s dad presents good reasons to fear humans, and is the first supporting character to rethink his prejudice. Director Brad Bird usually animates the rats as small furry people, but frequently animates them as rats, especially in sight of humans. As rats, they look terrific, especially moving in a carpet, and creepy enough to remind you that humans, including you, really don’t like rats, no matter how fuzzy-cute the vermin may at times appear. The humans, by comparison, remain cartoony throughout the film, in behavior as well as appearance. The kitchen staff is a non-entity. Skinner, by contrast, is over the top. Sometimes this works, as it did for Chuck Jones’s Daffy Duck; sometimes, it’s just excessive, as it was for Walter McKimson’s. Linguine’s lack of ambition leaves him a limp noodle, and the ghost of Gusteau, we are often reminded, is not really human, but a figment of Remy’s imagination. Although Remy lives with two paws in each world, it is the rat world that makes the film interesting.
A short statement before the film properly begins places Ratatouille in a production context, describing how it was conceived, along with Monsters, Inc., A Bug’s Life, and Finding Nemo, in a sweeping brainstorm session taken while Toy Story neared completion. The reminder of Pixar’s successes makes it impossible to avoid comparison. Ratatouille remains close to what could be called the Pixar formula, abruptly cutting its protagonist off from his former life and forcing him to deal with a human world from a non-human perspective. This is not entirely unwelcome; Ratatouille retains Pixar’s signature talent for seemingly throwaway jokes detached from the action, as when Remy observes a lover’s tiff while dashing through their apartment’s wainscoting. She threatens him, he challenges her, a shot rings out, he boasts he knew she couldn’t bring herself to do it, loud smooches rise from below. It’s funny, but the joke also serves to establish setting: this is a city of passions, and the passions we see for food, or from Colette even for the loser Linguine, will seem reasonable. Ratatouille also adopts Pixar’s well-appreciated technique of employing voice actors for their acting, and not their celebrity status, although you will recognize many names in the credits. The characters are themselves, unlike Eddie Murphy playing himself in a donkey suit. Production values remain top-of-the-line, as we’ve come to expect from Pixar—far ahead of Dreamworks and other imitators. The audience is treated to the usual pre-movie short, although the “outtakes” shown during the credits seem to be a thing of the past.
In other ways, the distinctive Pixar fingerprint is less rewarding. John Lasseter was right to caution against developing a formula, and Ratatouille, in remaining fairly close to this emerging formula, is neither as original nor as successful as Bird’s efforts in The Incredibles, although it remains far more original and successful than Lasseter’s own Cars, which was straight, saccharine Disney. The harder Pixar works to remain creatively independent of the Disney brand, the better we can expect the future of animation to be.