Retro Nerd Girl Movie Reviews: Ratatouille 2007 - Movie Review w/Spoilers

From the far reaches of the Milky Way Galaxy, It's Retro Nerd Girl with a film review for you.

Today I'll be reviewing the movie Ratatouille released in 2007.

Starring:

Brad Garrett, Lou Romano, Patton Oswalt

Directed by:

Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava

Genre:

Animation, Comedy, Family

Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA):

Budget:

$150,000,000 (estimated)

Current IMDb Rating When Reviewed:

8.0

The Synopsis is:

Remy is a rat from the country who dreams of being a Parisian chef. He finds himself alone in the big city of Paris and with the help of a human, Alfredo Linguini as his guise, he cooks for humans at a world famous restaurant.

Story:

Pixar's eighth feature length film was a concept was hatched by Jan Pinkava in 2001 who created the original design, sets, characters, and basics of the story along with the help of Jim Capobianco. As good as the idea was Pixar’s management didn’t feel confident with the total concept and didn’t think the story had as much depth that it needed for one of their productions.

The head of Pixar, John Lasseter asked Brad Bird, who had just finished The Incredibles (2004) to help out and eventually was given the role of director.

Ultimately Jan Pinkava's involvement in the film ended after a few years and he left the company.

Brad Bird, Producer Brad Lewis and some of the crew went to Paris for a week to research the story ideas and pull upon real experiences of being in Paris. They took a motorcycle tour around the capital, and ate at its five top restaurants from which they got a lot of influence and reference for the film.

With Pinkava’s great ideas Brad Bird tweaked it and rewrote the screenplay.

The biggest change in the story was to bring the story in the heart of Paris above ground with humans instead of keeping the story set underground in the catacombs and sewers in Paris as originally planned.

In the original story the chef of Gusteau, Auguste Gusteau was supposed to be a live human character, but in the film he is a ghost. Also, Gusteau's second hand man who runs the restaurant, Skinner and the su-chef Colette had a bigger role now the look of the rats in the story were redesigned to look more realistic.

The name of the film Ratatouille originates from a double meaning, since the main protagonist is a rat and the second is that ratatouille is a traditional French meal prepared with vegetables.

The story starts out pretty simply, but then blossoms into a touching story. It is a very mature story with very little slapstick or antics. It’s very serious and an all of the comedy that comes out of it is really appropriate. I loved it.

As with many Pixar and Disney movies we get a lot of references to their other movies.

There is a hidden Mickey when Remy tastes cheese and a strawberry together and a few other times in the story.

We see Bomb Voyage from The Incredibles (2004).

Every Pixar movie must have a reference to room A-113 from the California Institute of the Arts where many animators began their career.

An elderly red-haired woman fires a shotgun at Remy and his brother Emile just as in The Rescuers (1977), when Madame Medusa who dons red hair, fires her shotgun at the mice, Miss Bianca and Bernard.

Pacing:

At an hour and 51 minutes, it is pretty good. It just got a little frustrating in the middle, but it worked itself out by the end.

Challenge:

Well the challenge in this film is that our protagonist, Remy. is a rat. I think it wouldn’t be so bad if within the rat society there was a request for his services as a chef, but he seems to desperately want to be a chef in the human world and that presents Remy with a big challenge right out of the gate.

Remy’s Father Django scoffs at his dreams of being a chef among humans because he is afraid for his son. He even takes Remy to a shop window displaying dead rats (that actually exists in real life called Destruction des Animaux Nuisibles in operation since 1872, located 8 rue des Halles in the first arrondissement).

The clear villain of the film is Skinner the temporary head chef at Gusteau’s who seeks to take over permanently and use Gusteau’s name to make money on frozen dinners.

Chef Skinner was named after psychologist B.F. Skinner theorized that learning is the result of reward and punishment based on his experiments on rats he trained to push a button for food while being locked in special cages called Skinner boxes.

In the movie, Skinner is a very over the top and ambitious character doing all that he can to keep anyone from finding out that Gusteau has an heir, Alfredo Linguini, the trash boy, so he can take over the restaurant business.

Anton Ego the food critic, is the most impressionable villain of the story actually killing Gusteau in theory by possibly unfairly giving the restaurant a bad review. He is an elegant man on appearances, but ghastly intimidating with a vile sense of cruelty as he relishes his role as an important influence to the community.

Ego’s room for writing is shaped like a coffin, and the back of his typewriter resembles a skull playing on the fact that he has caused a death with it or (even funnier) writes “killer reviews”.

While tasting Remy’s ratatouille, Ego finds himself feeling emotions he hadn’t experienced since childhood, in what I can describe as the feeling of the comfort of family and of being loved.

His character was also a gentle commentary on the role of critics, how easily it is for them to viciously review inferior materials monstrously, but in spite of that they are people with compassion as well, waiting to be deeply touched by the work of artisans.

What I like about the character is how we were able to find him so very relatable and his character arc was inspiring.

Empathy:

Right away we like Remy the rat because although life is hard for him his subconscious mind will not allow him to settle for an unsatisfying life where he cannot experiment with food.

With his family of rats, he is treated as a weirdo for being able to sense out the flavors in food and in fact he is put to use his talents for poison checking.

He ends up in Paris at Gusteau’s restaurant, of all places, with Gusteau’s ghosts to lead him there.

There he meets his purpose to be the chef at a human restaurant through the garbage boy Alfredo Linguini who I already mentioned is the secret heir to the Gusteaus. His name is a play on a dish, linguini with alfredo sauce.

Linguini is untalented when it comes to cooking, but with a little help from Remy controlling his moments by pulling his hair strategically, he becomes the most sought after chef in Paris.

It becomes apparent that this charade won't hold up forever and after reuniting with his family, Remy realizes that he doesn’t quite fit in any where. He even says that he tries to be a rat and tries to pretend to be human, but is not successful at either one.

There is also a love story between Linguini and his co-worker Collette. Collette is one of the more interesting characters in the film, but she only serves to backup Linguini, who isn’t as fascinating.

Technical:

Initially the rats would be more like the rats shown in the 2D end credits sequence, more cute and unrealistic. However, the design of the rats were made after a rat expert brought a group of real rats for the art and animation departments to observe for more than a year so that the animators could study their movements and structure.

And you can see that realism within the animation, while still keeping a very human like quality to their faces and acting.

For more authentic movement and realism, Brad Bird had mainly female animators working on Colette’s animation.

The animation team studied chef Thomas Keller at his restaurant French Laundry in order to better understand the art of cooking and Mr. Keller voices a cameo as the voice of a patron at Gusteau's.

The famous dish ratatouille that Remy prepares is actually a variation called confit byaldi adapted by Thomas Keller. The difference between the two is that confit byaldi is prepared with thinly slice veggies baked instead of all cut in chunks and cooked in a pot.

As well the animation of characters were at times played out in live action and then used as a model for the animation.

The visual scenes and establishing shots were pretty amazing capturing Paris in a way that is magical and inviting to those who have never been there.

One of the most incredible features in the film is the story’s theme song, Le Festin, written and produced by Michael Giacchino and performed by Camille courtesy of EMI Music France/Virgin Music Division. It’s a very beautiful song capturing a very Parisian flair.

Performances:

The star of the film Remy was played by Patton Oswalt putting a wonderfully sensitive and extremely likeable tone to the character.

He got the role after Brad Bird saw his stand-up routine about the menu at the Black Angus Steakhouse, which you could probably hear on the internet. Although his character in the film is different from his standup, you can hear the inflections in his voice as he describes food.

Sir Ian Holm plays Skinner and almost didn’t recognize his voice in this as his performance was so vivacious.

Brad Garrett voiced Auguste Gusteau and Lou Romano distinctively voiced Alfredo Linguini, being staple collaborators on many Pixar films.

Peter O'Toole excellently voiced the food critic Anton Ego lending a bold rich statement with his character, both emanating the complexity of intimidation and sensitivity when needed.

Janeane Garofalo was especially wonderful voicing Colette lending a raw realism to the character while also being completely transformed.

Other voice actors of note were Brian Dennehy, Will Arnett and John Ratzenberger.

Best:

The best part of the film for me would be the way the film makes you care about Remy who is essentially a realistic looking rodent and Anton Ego the pessimistic and mean spirited food critic.

It’s a wonderful mixture of voice acting, animated acting, and dialogue cohesively married to enrich the story so beautifully. What they were able to do with those two characters was incredible.

The ending:

The ending felt a little rushed and almost circus like, until it slows down again and we get to get close to Anton Ego’s character and how he ends up helping Remy. It's’ a sweet happy ending because after all that little Remy has been through, he deserves a happy one.

Wish List:

I wish that the film made Linguini a bit smarter. Remy has been using his body to make the chef’s special for a week at the restaurant, but he still doesn’t know what ingredients are in the dish. He doesn’t even really have an arch. He’s still the same guy from the beginning to the end.

I wish that the romantic story line was not included. I liked Colette, but I just didn’t buy the romantic coupling of Colette and Linguini.

I wish that the story didn’t get so cluttered around the middle, near the end. I think what really annoyed me about it was the whole deceiving trope that is so prevalent in movies where a character is hiding something from another character and they get mad at each other even though they still care about each other. And it really isn't needed for us to enjoy the story.

Enjoyment:

Disney bought Pixar for 7.4 billion dollars in 2006 during the production and this was what the film needed to get some much needed exposure.

Unfortunately, the film got into a little trouble because no food product company wanted to be associated with rats.

Disney and Pixar were planning to bring a French-produced Ratatouille-branded wine to Costco stores, but the California Wine Institute wisely felt cartoon characters on wine bottles would encourage under-age drinking.

And then the name of the movie, though clever, was a french word that the general public wasn’t familiar with, so Disney/Pixar had it spelled phonetically on all of the promotional materials so people would know how to pronounce it.

No matter the challenges out of the gate, you can’t keep a good movie down! The film debuted at number one with $47 million and grossed $206 million in the US and over $620 million dollars worldwide, making it the third highest grossing Pixar film at the time. In France the film broke the record for the biggest debut for an animated film.

Veteran Disney animator, Victor Haboush, who worked on Sleeping Beauty (1959), Lady and the Tramp (1955) and 101 Dalmatians (1961), called this film "the best animated film since Pinocchio (1940)".

Ratatouille was nominated for five Oscars including Best Original Score, Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Original Screenplay and Best Animated Film.

And Disney created a theme park attraction based on the film in Disneyland Paris based upon scenes from the film where visitors are “shrunk” down to the size of a rat.

I didn’t really think much of actually seeing the film, because it didn’t appeal to me and I especially didn’t want to watch this movie because to be totally honest, I am secretly super duper afraid of rats! The thought of them just drives me insane. There’s one scene where the elderly woman’s ceiling falls revealing a ridiculous number of rats, I swear I nearly lost it. It’s totally disgusting!

This film was suggested by so many people who have said it was their favorite movie so I gave it a chance.

When it became available to me I braved watching it and it was a wonderful surprise how the film was able to make me so sympathetic to Remy and tastefully (no pun intended) brought some touching emotions to many of the characters, in the way that they were animated, voice acted, and written. I loved it.

What a nice surprise.