1 Jul
Ratatoullie - A Split Personality
So let’s get this out of the way, Ratatouille isn’t a grand slam home run out of the park. It isn’t even a regular home run, but you shouldn’t dismiss the movie completely. What is Pixar’s slight fumble, is everyone else’s pretty good movie.
First of all, the movie looks great. The scenes of Remy our hero the rat, running around the restaurant kitchen are quite fun and very kinetic. It isn’t a point of view that you see everyday. The views of the virtual Paris are also quite something to take in. I enjoyed the characters unlike some reviewers. The voice acting was top notch. Where the film didn’t fire on all cylinders is thematically.
Thematically, Ratatoullie has a split personality that it doesn’t completely resolve which ultimately make the film an uneven effort in my opinion. At the beginning of the movie, we meet celebrity chef Gusteau who writes a cookbook called Anyone Can Cook. The movie continues to push this idea that anyone can cook, if they just put their mind to it. Time and time again characters finally give into this moral core of the movie that anyone can cook. However, the movie doesn’t practice what it preaches. In the movie we meet down on his luck garbage boy Linguini. Linguini can’t cook. Not at all. Everything that he touches in the kitchen is basically solid waste. Despite this fact Linguini becomes a kind of celebrity chef himself. But only with the assistance of Remy the cooking Rat. At no point during the movie do we see Linguini cook anything that is suitable for human or even rat consumption. So really, not everyone can cook seems to be the message that the movie practices. The movie lamely tries to straighten this out by a character pointing out that yes, everyone can cook, but only some are really, really good at it. That doesn’t wash with how the plot plays out.
My other complaint would be the rather limp and unbelievable romance between Linguini and the female chef in the kitchen. Oh and Linguini’s understanding of how one gets in to heaven seems a little suspect. Parental warning: there is quite a bit of alcohol consumption in the movie and at one point Linguini gets drunk.
Other than that, I thought the movie was pretty good, but not a home run.
Later taters!
Posted by Emilia Blanco on 01.07.07 at 12:28 pm
I loved the movie! I took my 5 year old son to see it this weekend and we both enjoyed it very much, I will bw sure to purchase the DVD when it comes out!
Posted by Sue Lewthwaite on 01.07.07 at 12:28 pm
Saw Ratatoullie yesterday with my 8 year old son. He enjoyed it quite a bit, I on the other hand, just about fell asleep a few times. Not exactly sure why, it wasn’t as bad as some other movies I’ve seen, but there is just something missing which I can’t put my finger on. I will say one thing, I was rather surprised as to how few people were in the theatre at the time, considering all the hype there was for the movie, and from looking around the theatre and some of the comments I overheard when it was over, the other adults didn’t seem to enjoy it much either. There was also a couple of families that left when the kids couldn’t get past the first 15 minutes. I suppose it is one of those movies, you either enjoy it, or you don’t, there doesn’t seem to be any middle ground.