Waiter, There’s a Fly in my Movie!

Let’s get this out of the way before we go any further. Ratatouille, the latest Pixar film presented by Disney/Pixar Animation Studios, is not Pixar’s best effort to date. Technically and artistically, the film is prepared as brilliantly and served up as beautifully as anything we’ve come to expect from the kitchens of the Emeryville animation studio. Unfortunately, most of the film’s main characters appear to suffer from being handled by too many cooks.

Having said that, I should also point out that even the most ordinary fare from Pixar is still ten times better than virtually all of the overly processed, fast-food junk in theatres today. Flaws and all, Ratatouille is one of this year’s funniest and most satisfying movie going experiences.

…for a restaurant to be good, so many pieces have to come together.—Thomas Keller, Chef and restaurateur of The French Laundry and Chef de Pixar on Ratatouille.

Keller could have been speaking about movies as well. For a movie to be truly good and withstand the test of time, every piece from beginning to end must fall precisely into place. An animated film bears the additional burden of bringing the talents and temperaments of hundreds of artists together in such a way as to create a series of images that appear to be the work of a single hand.

It is that idea of a single vision that lies at the heart of the flaws within Ratatouille.

Brad Bird is credited as Screenwriter and Director of Ratatouille. Jan Pinkava is credited as Co-Director. Pinkava, the writer and director of Pixar’s award winning short Geri’s Game, left the studio in 2006, shortly after Pixar’s chief creative officer John Lasseter replaced him with Bird as lead director. Although Bird has said he completely rewrote the script for Ratatouille, Pinkava had already developed the primary storyline and created the major characters.

Bird, one of the industry’s most talented and gifted directors, has done a wonderful job of producing a movie that is as much fun to watch as it is laugh-out-loud funny. His only problem appears to have been the same one audiences may have; that is, neither he nor we ever really get to know much about what informs the action of Ratatouille’s principal characters.

Remy, the central character in Ratatouille (voiced by comedian Patton Oswalt), is a rat who dreams of one day becoming a great chef, because he has a gift for sniffing out the subtle aromas of truly great food. We know this because Remy tells us this, and because we see and hear him artistically and musically experiencing the blissful joy of combining food flavors into taste sensations.

What we never learn is how Remy comes to understand English (or is it French—more on that in a minute), learns to read, and can, through body language, communicate with humans better than a Paris street mime.

Looking like something right out of a Tim Burton film, Ratatouille’s heavy, Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole), seems, for no apparent reason, to harbor an enormous grudge against all those who can cook. From his cadaverous appearance to his coffin like office, we know he’s the bad guy, but we never find out what’s at the bottom of his disdain for Chef Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garrett) and his restaurant. This lack of a deeper understanding of Ego weakens the dramatic impact of his participation in the story’s final conclusion.

Skinner (Sir Ian Holm), the present Chef de Cuisine at Gusteau’s, was once the great chef’s Sous Chef and second in command. We see that Skinner is petty and small, both literally and figuratively, and obsessed, when it comes to making money, with taking short cuts across Gusteau’s once renowned kitchen. What we never learn is anything about his relationship with Gusteau prior to the great chef’s death, other than the fact that Gusteau felt compelled to leave Skinner the restaurant in his will.

Could Skinner’s ambition have played a part in Gusteau’s untimely demise? Such an idea is broadly hinted at, but never resolved.

The “Ick” Factor

In the run up to the release of his film, director Brad Bird told an interviewer for the New York Times that he resisted making Remy more human. He even went so far as to predict that the sense of aversion to finding a rat in the kitchen, much less preparing food, would become an “asset in seeking attention in a crowed (summer movie) season.”

“That ‘ick’ is something in our favor,” Bird told the Times. “It makes the story more interesting.”

After seeing Ratatouille, audiences may find themselves recalling the words of Pixar creative head John Lasseter. “Computers want to do things perfectly,” Lasseter has frequently said when speaking of CG animation. And perfectly is how Pixar’s computers depict the swarming of “The Colony” that Remy and his family belong to.

Funny, yes! For the squeamish, no!

If You Knew Edna…

If you fell in love with Brad Bird’s creation of the diminutive fashionista Edna Mode in The Incredibles, you’re going to love Skinner. He is Edna with a pencil moustache and without the glasses. Just like Edna, Skinner must compensate for his lack of physical stature, and just like Edna, he hilariously employs improbable props to look down on people and the world.

Which brings us to Ratatouille’s greatest achievement, its mastery of physical comedy. Unlike many of today’s CG-animation studios that seem obsessed with idea of perfecting human form and movement, Bird and Pixar never loose sight of the fact that they’re working with characterizations of human frailty and fallibility—in other words, Toons.

Pratt falls, spit and double takes, and mock terror and surprise are all used to great effect in Ratatouille. What the characters may lack in development, they more than make up for in comedic timing and skill. The entire film is an homage to Chaplin, Keaton, Lloyd, and the great slapstick comedies of old.

All images from the Disney/Pixar film Ratatouille.
Copyright© Disney Enterprises

Speaking of Acting

The voice cast of Ratatouille is one of the strongest and best ever assembled by Pixar. The cast comes from England and America. Oddly enough, none of the cast is French, although several of the characters do speak with a French accent.

Colette (Janeane Garofalo), Skinner (Sir Ian Holm), the sprightly Gusteau (Bard Garrett), and Skinner’s lawyer (Teddy Newton) all speak English with a pronounced French accent, so much so they sound as if they were born and raised on the banks of the river Seine.

Peter O’Toole endows Anton Ego with the mellifluence of his own wonderful vocal gifts.

Patton Oswalt (Remy), Brian Dennehy (Django, Remy’s father), and Peter Sohn (Emile, Remy’s brother) comprise the family of rats at the heart of Ratatouille who, despite their French names, all sound as if they’re from the same Southside Chicago neighborhood.

Pixar production designer Lou Romano rounds out the principal cast as the hapless garbage boy, Linguini. Linguini, despite his Italian sounding name and the secret of his birth, also speaks perfectly unaccented Midwestern U.S. English and will probably forever be remember for the line, “You’re the one who was gettin' fancy with the spices!”

One Final Note

Composer Michael Giacchino reunites with director Brad Bird to supply Ratatouille with a whimsically, jazzy, fast-paced, fun score that evokes a feeling of being in France from the very first bars.

In Ratatouille, Pixar has once again raised the artistic and technical bar to create, light, and design sets and scenes that are breathtaking works of art in their own right and yet, at the same time, only serve to complement, not distract from the characters and the action taking place in front of them.

Critics Choice

Toward the end of Ratatouille, Bird takes something of a chance by speaking through Ego, who, after all, is a food critic, on behalf of critics everywhere. Some may see this as tempting fate or perhaps even baiting those whose job it is, like mine, to comment upon the work of others without ever having had to risk pouring our souls into our life’s work.

I prefer to think of Bird’s observations as a way of saying that we, critics and filmmakers, are more alike than we are different. We both share the joy of a good story well told and unlike the filmmaker, who is bound by custom and is not free to tell the world when the work of his contemporaries fails to meet even the basic expectations of their craft, we critics can stand in their place and say we feel that this effort is good or that one not so good.

Ratatouille, while not perfect, is very good, very good indeed. B+

“Wonder takes time. You don’t rush wonder. You have to coax the audience toward you a little bit.”—Brad Bird director Ratatouille in the New York Times

 

Ratatouille a Walt Disney Pictures Presentation of a Pixar Animation Studios Film

Directed by Brad Bird, Produced by Brad Lewis

Rated G opens everywhere June 29, 2007