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movie review - Ratatouille

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

This is an unlikely movie about a rat that's moved by cuisine. There's a telling early scene where he and one of his (literally) innumerable siblings discover that said sibling is eating something despite not knowing what it is. The sibling problem is soon taken care of when our rat loses all of them. Alone and adrift in the sewers of Paris he finds another outcast, a garbage boy working in a famous kitchen. They strike up a conversation and it turns out they both have the same dream: to cook in that kitchen. The problem is the boy's useless.

The two decide to team up, with the rat making all the decisions and the boy carrying out the actions. Needless to say, this is silly bordering on stupid but they pull this off. The high stakes feel very real, and the actions and dialog and the nearly incessant mad-cap crises sequences drive the thing along at a great clip. There's a villain of sorts in a food critic who ah, smells a rat, and what happens there is one of the most memorable bit of movie I can remember.

What I particularly enjoyed about this compared to other outings from Pixar is its emotional resonance. For instance, with "Cars" I just didn't care about the supposed hero or his supposed struggle because it was transparent and the ending was telegraphed. By contrast there's no reason to expect success with this thing, and the people treat each other as you'd expect. Everything feels "right". This is probably helped along by the absolutely superb animation, which makes the rats feel like rats (and the Frenchmen feel like Frenchmen).

This is up there with "Toy Story".

Strongly recommended.