Ratatouille
Saw Pixar's latest Brad Bird outing, Ratatouille. I was skeptical going in; the trailers had been underwhelming and there just wasn't the level of geek expectation that had hovered over The Incredibles and Shrek, or even Cars. Also, the formidable Aardman had tried and mostly failed with Flushed Away earlier this year, and I had begun wondering if rats just make movie directors stupid. (Does anybody -anybody! -remember Rock and Rule, or The Secret of NIMH? And why do rat movies seem, like fundamental particles, to always come in pairs?)
My reaction, after a few days to think it over, is positive but a little peculiar. What we have here is a decent first-contact story between two alien races with only one thing in common: food. A common rat living in the country outside Paris has been graced with superior senses of taste and smell, and would love to tinker in the kitchen of the country house where he, his family, and friends live in the rafters. Alas, the French granny who lives in the house is heavily armed and dislikes rats, and after a slapstick confrontation that leaves their comfy colony in ruins, Remy the rat (voiced by Patton Oswalt) and his family set out for Paris by way of the storm drains.
Up to this point it's conventional kid fare; sardonic rats doing conventional ratty things while being chased around by irate humans. But once we get to Paris that all changes. What looked to be a kiddie action-comedy at the outset goes moody and buddy film-ish: Remy soon finds himself in a fancy French restaurant, where cartoon logic allows him to befriend the garbage boy, Linguini. (Lou Romano.) Linguini would like to be a five-star chef but has no talent for it; Remy has the talent but the bad karma to be a rat. Communication is a challenge, but once they understand one another, Remy and Linguini achieve a level of cooperation that borders on symbiosis, and reminded me a little of the relationship between Peter Novilio and the Sangruse Device in my novel, The Cunning Blood. The biology of the process is obscure, but is applied with consistency, and if you can willingly suspend disbelief, it just works.
I won't descrbe the rest of the plot, which is part soap opera, part cartoon foodie porn, and part Discovery Channel documentary on how fancy French restaurants work behind the scenes. The art is stunning, reminding me in many places of Maxfield Parrish, and the food and kitchen paraphernalia are rendered with accuracy achieved by sending the designers and animators to a high-end culinary school. It's just gorgeous, and the drawings of Paris powerfully evoke memories of my own visit there in 1981. (Why the hell haven't I ever gone back?!!?) The cartoon humans have been carefully maintained in cartoon territory, thus keeping us completely out of The Uncanny Valley. (The food, on the other hand, was scarily realistic.)
Overall, gentle good fun and a visual feast. There were a couple of issues:
- Linguini and the rats are nominally French, but sound either Midwestern American or New Yawkish. Linguini might as well have been from Nebraska. All the other humans, by contrast, speak with ethnic accents. It's jarring, especially in a film focusing on a cornerstone of French culture, and might with some skill have been handled with French accents throughout. After all, Eva Gabor's Bianca in The Rescuers had Eva's characteristic Hungarian accent.
- The film can't quite decide if it's for kids or adults, and given the topic, it might not be capable of both. There is no "adult" content (sexual humor, naughty words) but kids are not and can't be foodies, so much of the substance of the film will just shoot past them. There is a kid-action set-piece toward the end that accomplishes little (Remy dashes madly around Paris's canals with Chef Gusteau's will in his mouth, trying to get away from Yosemite Sam ringer Skinner) that blows the film's mood and throws us completely out of the story.
But don't let that stop you. It's beautiful, fun, and (remarkably!) it takes its time. This is the least manic cartoon film I've ever seen, edging out The Iron Giant in patience while it develops its characters and theme.
Recommended.