Ratatouille

Is anyone else sick of penguins? Yes, they’re cute. But if I have to watch another cartoon of these birds waddling on some ice cap… Anyway,  how about some rats? Director of The Incredibles and The Iron Giant, Brad Bird, has teamed up with Pixar to craft what is perhaps their finest movie to date, about a rat that wants to be a gourmet chef in Paris.
A what? Yes, a rat. A rat that wants to be a gourmet chef in Paris.

The great thing about Pixar movies is that they dare to be different. Finding Nemo, Toy Story, Monsters, Inc, and The Incredibles have redefined what audiences come to expect from animated features. And in Ratatouille (pronounced rat-a-too-ee), they push those expectations further.

The main rat in the film is Remy (Patton Oswalt), born with a remarkable sense of smell. Unlike his brother Emile (Peter Sohn) and father Django (Brian Dennehy) and the rest of the clan, which are satisfied with gorging on garbage, Remy’s palate leans towards a more refined palette of tastes enjoyed by humans. Which also means Remy tempts the fine line between enjoying good food and getting killed by scared humans more than occassionally.

Forced to move when one of Remy’s excursions into human territory goes horribly wrong, Remy gets separated from his clan in the sewers and ends up in Paris, more accurately at Gusteau’s, once the finest restaurant in all of Paris but now a shadow of what it once was. Through a lucky accident, Remy teams up with Alfredo Linguini (Lou Romano) the bumbling new garbage boy and creates a stunning soup that elevates Linguini’s status and popularises Gusteau’s once more. Head chef Skinner (Ian Holm) is jealous of Linguini’s apparent talent and conspires to get rid of him. But that’s not the only reason why.

The rest of the movie is just as crafty as its premise, with moments of humour, dread, action and drama that gradually tie up towards the movie’s complicated tenet: that no one should be excluded from his or her true calling in life at the expense of others.

Ratatouille is not merely a children’s cartoon. Brad Bird is a talented storyteller and the way he gets his point across in his cartoons hasn’t yet failed to astound. And with Pixar’s expertise, the movie is given a simple shimmering brilliance—with exquisite details such as Remy’s expressions, water movements, lighting effects, street scenes of Paris, etc. Yet again, however, another gem from Pixar. How can a rat possibly become a gourmet chef? Ratatouille shows how it’s done.

Dir Brad Bird Cast Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Lou Romano, Brian Dennehy Runtime 110 minutes Opens 16 August

Text Eugene Phua