Ratatouille
Ratatouille (2007)
Based on the true story of a rat with a highly developed sense of taste and smell who dreams of a life outside of the gutter.
We meet Remy the rat and his entire family living in the walls of a gun-toting geriatric’s cottage. Remy is unlike the other rodents. He walks upright because he “doesn’t want to be constantly washing his paws”. He is educated in the fine art of cooking by watching TV chef Gusteau and experimenting with what his unknowing landlady has on her shelves. Aside from his creative nature Remy has the gift of a sensitive nose and refined palette. Sadly his skills are wasted as chief ‘poison checker’ among his colony.
This idyllic vermin set-up is inevitably rumbled and the plague of rats fleeing the shotgun-blasting hostess is truly the stuff of nightmares. You take for granted the quality of animation these days (the entire film is literally a work of art) but the escape scene into the raging river as the heavens open is just so perfect that it of course can’t be real. The vivid blues and greys are too beautiful and the droplets of water too clear.
Abandoned by his network Remy explores the streets of Paris and a chance encounter with a nervous wreck of a kitchen porter leads our little hero to be working in the galley of one of Paris’ most famous restaurants.
There’s something about the lifestyle of a chef on film that’s so alluring. The romance. The passion. Despite the extreme pressure and the stress it always looks so rewarding.
It may be animation, it may concern a talking rat with a flare for fine-dining but essentially Ratatouille has all the ingredients of a classic story; good versus evil, love and jealousy, a secret from the past. It employs classic tropes like the training montage which takes our human greenhorn from zero to hero. It harkens back to that childhood fantasy of being tiny and surviving life’s burdens by using your creativity and guile. The same sense of adventure as ‘The Borrowers’ and ‘Honey I Shrunk the Kids’.
As a side-note, if there could be a new Oscar nomination I’d submit Best Animation Performance. I love Peter O’Toole as the foreboding food critic Anton Ego. Imagine Robin Williams winning for playing Aladdin’s Genie or Eartha Kitt for The Emperor’s New Groove?!
Nominated for Best Original Screenplay and going home with Best Animation Feature Film in 2008, take this Disney/Pixar concoction with a pinch of salt and enjoy on an early Saturday evening. It’ll inspire you to get inventive with the herbs and spices and rustle up a great evening meal.
10 tiny pink thumbs up!
