Check Out the Trailer

I’d like to introduce you to the first real contender for Best Film of 2007. Brad Bird is the best American director working in animation today. Knowing that he came onto the project midway is amazing, because he has made the best American animated film since TOY STORY 2 and his own IRON GIANT. He has also pushed the boundaries of American animation into a more adult realm. It’s still a film for the whole family, but I suspect parents will get more out of it than their kids.

Remy (Patton Oswalt, TV’s THE KING OF QUEENS) is a rat with a keen sense of smell. He loves fine cooking, which puts him at odds with is moldy meat-and-potatoes father, Django (Brian Dennehy, COCOON) and simple taste brother, Emile (Peter Sohn, story artist at Pixar). When they get forced out of their home in the country, the rat clan ends up in Paris. Remy gets separated from the rest and is inspired to check the city out by a figment of his imagination in the form of his favorite chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett, TV’s EVERYONE LOVES RAYMOND). He ends up in the deceased Gusteau’s famed restaurant, which is now run by the short tyrant Skinner (Ian Holm, LORD OF THE RINGS), who is more interested in using Gusteau’s fame to sell a line of frozen foods than to run the once five-star eatery.

This is when the hapless Linguini (Lou Romano, THE INCREDIBLES) shows up looking for a job. Skinner makes him the garbage boy, but when he inadvertently ruins the soup, Remy feels obligated to fix it. With “Linguini’s” soup a big hit, the young man decides to team up with Remy so that he can keep his job. But as the restaurant begins to get popular again, the cynical and intimidating food critic Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole, LAWRENCE OF ARABIA) wants to find out the new secret of their success.

What’s striking about the film is the complex adult feelings of the characters. Remy is torn between is love for his family and his love for cooking. Moreover, he desires a more refined life than that of his family. He wants more from life, but it doesn’t make him a snob. Linguini is an awkward young man, who doesn’t know what to do with his life. He is living a lie with Remy as the real genius behind his cooking, but what is he to do? Telling the truth that a rat is cooking could be disastrous. Additionally, Linguini’s relationship with Colette (Janeane Garofalo, TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS) is mature and layered. She is the only female chef in the kitchen, which is very tough. She begins to resent Linguini’s growing success after she trained him. Even the villains — Skinner and Ego — have their motivations and point of view that are deeper than most animated bad guys.

Another amazing element of the story is how it plays its fantastic premise with some level of realism. It’s a fantasy, but it does not ignore the way the world really is. This allows Remy to really stand as a metaphor for the idea that one can come from the gutter and become a great success. I also liked how the plot devices of Remy’s controlling Linguini’s actions mirrored the “angel on his shoulder” nature of Gusteau’s advise to Remy. The surprises of the ending are ingenious in how they set up a cute idea and make it work naturally without cheating. There are conflicts set up that pay off in a real world way, making the final events even more charming and satisfying. Bird takes the plot where it needs to go, but finds original emotional points that bring deeper meaning and feeling to what could have been the typical happy ending.

Rats are not the cuddliest of creatures to base an animated film around, but Remy is different and the film doesn’t shy away from the rodents’ bad rep. The design team did an excellent job of bringing the right character to the characters. And again the CG animation creates a lush and rich world. Don’t go into this film hungry unless you have reservations at your favorite restaurant afterwards already booked. Paris is always been a great cinematic backdrop for movies and Pixar renders it with the romance that it deserves for this tale.

Pixar is a company run by master storytellers. This is yet another crowning example of their uncanny ability to not only find the real heart of the stories they set out to tell, but discover new and innovative ways of expressing those stories. They never settle of doing what worked somewhere else. The filmmakers inject their own feelings into these features, which come across on the screen in powerful and surprising ways. They treat each feature as a personal project not a product.

RATATOUILLE represents these qualities so fully. All other American animated films pale in comparison. For so long American animated features were thought of as kid’s stuff, but that changed with the success of more adult productions. But now too many studios view animated features as a sure fire way to get families (thus more butts) into the theaters. RATATOUILLE proves that Pixar isn’t worried about ticket sales first, because they are more worried about making a piece of art. That’s why RATATOUILLE is an instant classic and why it will last the test of time. And that’s more valuable than making quick coin on some Happy Meal deals for an animated feature people will forget by next summer.