Review - Ratatouille

Ratatouille continues the Pixar tradition of producing highly polished and lovable animated films that appeal to both children and adults. Their presentation begins with a short cartoon called Lifted, a nicely old-fashioned tale of alien abduction that could have been made by Chuck Jones during the golden age of animation, had he been given the technology through a rogue wormhole. The main feature is the story of a rat from rural France called Remy who has an unusually sensitive sense of smell. Taking a different life path from Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Perfume, he uses his gift to improve the taste of any dish a human makes, even those of the best chefs. Finding himself in Paris, he seeks out the restaurant of his idol, a recently deceased tv chef, and manages to show off his culinary skills with the help of a lowly kitchen boy called Linguini.

The quality of animation here is, as always with Pixar, outstanding, especially when it comes to the rats and the views of Paris. It is a relief to not have a cast list unnecessarily stuffed full with big names (something that was distracting with films like Happy Feet), and everyone performs well. Peter O’Toole really stands out as Anton Ego, a morose and ghostly restaurant critic, matching the voice to the character perfectly.

Remy’s tale of the underdog achieving against great odds (and these are very big odds, as it is extremely disturbing to see a rat cooking, even a cartoon one) is very appealing, especially since he is extremely adorable and furry-looking. There was one anomaly (apart from the obvious ‘rat being a chef’ thing), however, that annoyed me slightly: accents are not consistent. The story takes place in France, and the rats have American accents. This is ok, since they are speaking Rat, and maybe rats have American accents when you translate Rat to English, I don’t know. Humans spoke English with a French accent (again completely acceptable), except for Linguini, who again had an American accent. Is he speaking Rat? No! And all the other humans could understand him! Is he supposed to be French, American, or Italian as his name would suggest? This is never made clear, and troubles me greatly.

Apart from that, it was really good. There are lots of very funny jokes, and a nice message at the end, which is exactly what you want in a film like this.