Review

Review Date: 1-July-07
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Juicy

Ratatouille (2007)

My appreciation of "Ratatouille" was enhanced by the preceding trailer for "Underdog," which, apart from its tagline "One Nation Under Dog," is quite repulsive. There's something creepy about seeing a real, live pup discussing butt-sniffing with his owner in English. Technology has expanded the visual possibilities of cinema, yet it's best used to stretch the imagination rather than to warp reality. "Ratatouille" proves this point.

Indeed, one needs to stretch the imagination to swallow this fully animated picture, especially if one doesn't like rodents. (Me, I think they're cute.) Writer/director Brad Bird's unlikely hero is a rat called Remy (Patton Oswalt) whose story illustrates that everybody should follow their dreams. This petit fellow hails from the French countryside, where his father leads a pack that lives off garbage. But Remy has an affinity for mold-free cuisine — a real gastronomic gift, in fact — and he regularly sneaks into an old lady's cottage to raid the pantry and watch his favorite chef on TV. When he is caught red-pawed one night and his clan must run for their lives, Remy gets separated from the others and lands in Paris at the fabled but troubled restaurant founded by his idol.

The serendipity continues as Remy meets the gangly orphan Linguini (Lou Romano), who was hired to clean the restaurant at the mysterious deathbed request of his mother. At first the young man is reluctant to befriend a rat, particularly a lucid and literate one, but he needs Remy to keep his job. For the restaurant is now run by a right little Napoleon (Ian Holm) who mistakenly believes his new kitchen boy might be a cooking prodigy. (The kid couldn't make a cheese sandwich.) In a funny montage of trial-and-error bonding, Remy and Linguini devise a method of human puppetry whereby the former controls the latter's body by pulling on his hair, which can fortunately be hidden under a hat. This allows Remy to exercise his talent undetected. Combined with the truth about Linguini's parentage, it soon elevates rat and boy to the most noted culinary artist in France.

The tensions of the tale are varied, stemming from the greed of the aforementioned Napoleon, a tentative romance between Linguini and a fellow chef (Janeane Garofalo), and the pressures put upon Remy after reuniting with his family. (Human-rat animosity is mutual, it seems.) Some of the struggles feel a little stale, but one ends the story on a sweet note like a rich torte or fine Madeira. This involves a supercilious food critic with the wonderful name of Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole), who is bent on destroying the restaurant for having not lived up to his standard. Faced with Ego sitting down to dinner with poisoned pen in hand, all the characters reveal themselves to be loyal or selfish, truthful or afraid. The moment Ego passes judgment on Remy's ratatouille is magical. It speaks to the power of food to transport us, and it unites the movie's best themes of love, faith, and cooking.

Copyright © 2007 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.