Reviewing Ratatouille

Pronunciation: [ræt.ə.ˈtu.i] Rat-a-too-ee

In the midst of all the expected and awaited summer blockbuster, one movie which did make it to number one last week but might go unnoticed by the adult crowd is Disney’s Ratatouille. The animated story of a rat, Remy, who can cook and a young man, Linguini, who can’t, but together they resurrect one of the once famous restaurants in all of Paris.

I think this is destined to become a classic animated film and it is one of the more mature ones. In fact it actually got me wondering whether film will ever go in that direction: to have a purely adult animated film that doesn’t cater to children. By way of story and dialogue this one effectively reaches for that potential and I think it succeeds. Unfortunately, animation, despite all the advances in the past decade and a half – from the Simpson’s to Shrek – is still seen as a children’s genre. Meanwhile, films like Ratatouille out do themselves by providing a script most children would have trouble following, but the parents bring them along because there’s a fuzzy cartoon character with a celebrity voice that’s running around doing cool things up on the silver screen. Some times I wonder if the parents are using their kids as a cover.

I hope that films like Ratatouille will begin to change that, and start a whole new genre in film that makes it okay for adults to watch animated films. Films that have the ability to use the art of animation to dazzle us and take us into a world of pure cinematic imagination, which in my opinion, is what movies are all about in the first place.

Brad Bird, who brought us The Incredibles, has really out done himself here. Ratatouille is deserving of all the critical acclaim it’s been getting as well as the millions upon millions of box office receipts in the past couple of days.

It is easily one of the best movies of the summer if not the year, and is worthy of an Oscar nomination. I highly recommend it; it is one of the few movies you’ll ever watch that does not disappoint.

Bottom Line: 5/5