Ratatouille
Reviewed by David on July 08, 2007
Anyone can cook. So claims famous chef Gusteau in his best-selling cookbook. He may not have thought that even a rodent could cook haute cuisine when he wrote it, but his ghost accompanies Remy the rat from the sewer to the kitchen. Remy befriends Linguini, a clueless restaurant employee, and uses him to cook soup finer than even ill-tempered Hell's Kitchen chef Gordon Ramsay. The soup restores the restaurant's good name and sets them on a collision course with France's most brutal critic, Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole).
In typical Pixar fashion, Ratatouille is a movie children can enjoy rather than being a children's movie. The story isn't dumbed down and condescending physical humor is kept to a minimum. There's plenty for kids to enjoy in Ratatouille but it doesn't treat them like they have the intelligence of sea slugs, either.
The Pixar animation team has become so good at the animation that it's easy to forget the 3D rendered streets of Paris are animated at all. Not that early Pixar films were bad, but in the past, the animation was a bigger draw than the story. The old Toy Story days of being shocked that they could do this at all are gone, replaced by solid story-telling.
The voice acting of O'Toole in particular is welcome relief from other Disney mishaps (Princess Mononoke). Director Brad Bird (The Incredibles) changes perspectives nicely from rat level to human to make a rather pedestrian kitchen feel like a new experience. There are no zany, overblown antics or an annoying childlike musical score here; just excellent story-telling. And judging by the excited reaction of the kids in the theater, Pixar has hit the mark again.
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