Ratatouille

Directed by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava. Written by Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava, and Jim Capobianco. Starring Lou Romano (Linguini), Patton Oswalt (Remy), Brad Garrett (Gusteau).

Bottom line: Ratatouille is a wonderful Pixar movie that I would recommend to anyone especially if one enjoys food.

3.5/4

Ratatouille opens with an exposition describing the late, fictional celebrity chef Gusteau (Garrett) whose motto was “Anyone can cook.” We cut to our protagonist; a rat named Remy (Oswalt). Remy is gifted with an advanced sense of smell which teaches him to appreciate the food that he eats. He’d rather not eat garbage when there is a whole culinary world around him. In his attempts to get some basic spices, he stumbles upon a cooking show featuring the aforementioned chef. Before he knows it, Remy finds himself in Paris. Exploring a little further, he makes his way to Gusteau’s restaurant. He watches, with hungry eyes, the creations of the master chefs. Remy crosses paths with the recently hired garbage boy, Linguini (Romano). The pair team up; Linguini will be the human representative of the two, while Remy provides the culinary direction.

Ratatouille isn’t too dissimilar from the dish of the same name. Ratatouille (the dish) is a bunch of vegetables, cooked together and baked. It’s simple but it can be delicious. In Ratatouille we follow the smallest of characters, a rat, in his quest to do what he dreams; to cook. There are so many wonderful decisions even with the basic premise. Consider the idea of simply cooking. It’s something we can all relate to because even if the audience doesn’t like to cook per se, who doesn’t like food? We can follow Remy’s quest and imagine tasting his creations. And even the desire to cook is attainable for anyone in the audience. It just takes practice to get a sense of the mechanics, aromas, and flavors. Indeed, “anyone can cook” and Ratatouille makes the ordinary that much more magical.

The music of Ratatouille is phenomenal (I’m listening to the theme song “Le Festin” by Camille as I write). Some of the characters, particularly Linguini, teeter on goofy which I’m not the biggest fan of but they are so darn endearing it’s ok. The graphics are, of course, incredible. Early in the film, Remy goes down a raging river and the water effects are amazing, even by today’s standards and this came out in 2008.

I’d highly recommend Ratatouille. I’ve seen it several times and it’s always been a lot of fun. It’s accessible to everyone too so it’s a great family movie. I hope you see Ratatouille and enjoy it as much as I have. This is, of course, assuming you haven’t seen it a number of times already.

Thanks for reading!