Review: Ratatouille

Set in France, Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) is a rat who has a nose for fine cuisine and an obvious aptitude for cooking that his father (voiced by Brian Dennehy) and the other rats just don’t get. What he doesn’t have are the size and the hands to make a go of it. He’s a rat, after all, though his hero Gusteau (voiced by Brad Garrett, with an accent) claims ‘anyone can cook’, giving Remy hope. He gets his chance to do his thing when dishwasher and wannabe chef Linguini (voiced by Lou Romano) needs some assistance in recreating an infamous Gusteau soup dish (he works in the late chef’s restaurant) or else he will be fired by new head chef Skinner (Ian Holm). Remy obviously can’t allow himself to be seen by Skinner or the customers, but he agrees to help Linguini out by hiding under his chef hat and telling him what to do, mostly via tugging on his hair. Or something like that. Janeane Garofalo voices pretty female chef Colette, whilst Peter O’Toole’s pomposity and put to good use as the voice of fearsome food critic Anton Ego, who shows up at the least expected times.

 

Director Brad Bird (“The Incredibles”, “Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol”) and Pixar strike out with this tedious 2007 animated effort that nonetheless a lot of critics seemed to like. I think you’d have to be a real foodie to get anything from this, and even then all the rodents might just ruin your appetite. Fair’s fair, the rats are ‘prettied’ up as much as possible I guess. In fact, it’s a really nice-looking, well-animated film, possibly the best-looking animated film up to that point. I particularly liked the seeming attention paid to sources of light.

 

That’s the good news. Plot and character-wise I could’ve given two shits about all of this. Food just isn’t my thing. I eat what I like and I eat because I have to. Sure, I watch reality TV cooking contests, but those things have (manufactured) drama. This just didn’t do it for me, with only one rat character with any depth whatsoever. The rest all blend together, whilst the human chef is frankly not terribly likeable or interesting. The drama was clichéd and corny, ‘moral’ stuff (follow your dreams and all that underdog crap) and the film is much more of a drama than a comedy, which is a real miscalculation in my view. When the comedy comes it’s mostly lame slapstick, and not really to my taste. I’m also getting heartily sick of hearing Brad Garrett’s voice in animated movies. The only vocal standout was Peter O’Toole as the snooty critic, and I’m not normally an O’Toole fan. He’s perfect, the film tedious. Meanwhile, the French accents are more fake than on “Allo, ‘Allo”, and isn’t this all just a tad unsanitary? 

 

Some people seem to have really responded to this one, but I was bored. It’s pretty, but boring and at nearly two hours I started to get kinda angry with it. Possibly ‘hangry’. This one just wasn’t for me, and I’d be surprised if kids love it. Its subject seems a tad high-brow to me. The screenplay is by Bird, from a story by Bird along with Jim Capobianco (who worked on the stories for Disney’s “The Lion King” and “The Hunchback of Notre Dame”) and Jan Pinkava (who was replaced as director early in production).

 

Rating: C