Ratatouille
Release Date: June 2007
Director: Brad Bird (originally Jan Pinkava)
Produced by Pixar/distributed by Disney
10 July 2007
Ah, where to start with this charming, entrancing film? With the
story? The animation? The writing? All are first-rate.
Remy is the main character, a rat who aspires to more than a life of
scrounging garbage to eat. He has an unusually keen sense of
smell, which contributes to his love of good food--and he lives in
France, where people know how to eat well. When his family is
discovered and has to flee their home, Remy gets separated from them
and ends up in Paris. He spies on the kitchen of a once-five-star
restaurant, now reduced to three stars by a scathing review by the
critic Anton Ego and by the resulting death of the chef Gusteau.
Meanwhile, Gusteau's has hired an inept young man, Linguini, as their
garbage boy. When Linguini spills a pot of soup and tries to hide
the act by throwing together a new pot, Remy comes to the rescue and
saves the soup--but he's captured and Linguini is ordered to kill him.
Of course Linguini doesn't, and instead the two misfits team up.
As Linguini says, Remy is good at cooking while he's good at
acting human.
The movie is beautiful to look at--breathtakingly beautiful, from the
rat's eye views of a world behind building walls, to the grand vistas
of a Paris glittering with lights. The animation is superb even
for a Pixar film. And the food--believe me, you'll leave the
movie hungry, literally. Popcorn doesn't cut it; theaters need to
serve ratatouille.
While the story is sweet and well-written, it does drag a little at
times. Linguini is funny, but his fretful harrangues sometimes go
on too long and occasionally he verges on annoying. But that's a
small problem in an otherwise marvelous film.
The short that opens the movie, "Lifted," is very funny and charming in its own right.
5 January 2005
Ratatouille will be Pixar's first movie after their break from Disney. At
the moment there is no word on who will distribute the film, but Sony, 20th
Century Fox, and Warner Brothers are all major possibilities.
The film was formerly referred to as "Rats" or just "The Rodent Project,"
but the name is now more or less definitely Ratatouille, after the main character.
There's not much out about the plot, except that Ratatouille lives
in a fancy French restaurant.
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