Freeper Review: “Incredible” Values Shine Through In Pixar’s “Ratatouille”

Freeper Review: “Incredible” Values Shine Through In Pixar’s “Ratatouille”

SPOILER ALERT!

Ratatouille, a Pixar Animation Studios film distributed by the Walt Disney Company, is about a rat that wants to be a French chef. It doesn’t sound impressive, and on its face doesn’t seem like something that would come out of Pixar, which has a twelve-year winning streak (Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Cars) made more remarkable by the nation’s declining interest in anything other than the biggest-budgeted Hollywood blockbusters – and, of course, their inevitable (and seemingly endless) sequels.

Personally, I had a touch of skepticism about Ratatouille dating all the way back to when the first trailer was shown before Pixar’s last feature, Cars. “How in the world can a Pixar-quality film be made about a cooking rat?” I thought to myself. And which came first, the punny title, or the story? It had the sound of a script treatment that was written on a napkin, and later greenlighted in a cable cartoon network’s boardroom after a wine malt liquor-tasting. How else would the world have been given Aqua Teen Hunger Force or My Gym Partner Is a Monkey?

I was already having enough trouble swallowing Cars as a Pixar-worthy effort. Animated automobiles with eyes and mouths? That’s an idea as old as the hills in the backgrounds of Steamboat Willie -- every TV watcher within one hundred miles of a Chevron station has seen enough cute talking animated cars to last the rest of their lives. On top of that, the story line of Cars was pedestrian (sorry) and clichéd. One wonders if everyone at Pixar who worked on Cars would dare swear they had never seen Doc Hollywood, a 1991 Michael J. Fox vehicle (sorry again) with an almost identical concept: Arrogant Eastern U.S.-dwelling whiz kid on the road to money and glory in California takes a wrong turn and suffers a smash-up in the sticks. He is stranded, and the sticks’ hicks refuse to let him out of town until he’s done something to help them. Eventually, he learns the true meanings of humility, friendship, and (of course) love. Been there, seen that. In the end, the success of Cars depended solely on the talent-rich Pixar team’s deep reservoir of visual creativity. Cars worked in spite of itself, but it was a close call.

Easing my fears Pixar’s status as standard-bearer of family entertainment was in danger was the news Brad Bird was entrusted with writing and directing Ratatouille after original creator Jan Pinkava – according to published reports – couldn’t really make the story he conceptualized “work.” Bird was the writer and director of The Incredibles, which won 2004’s Academy Award for Animated Feature.

Unlike Ratatouille, The Incredibles was a high-concept winner from the beginning: The Parrs, an everyday suburban nuclear family of five, have a secret; four of them have superpowers. The father and mother – each having been issued secret identities by the government many years prior – emerge from forced retirement and enlist their two oldest youngsters and another heroic family friend to help save the world. But before battling any bad guys, the superpapa has to win his personal battle of the bulge, his gut having stretched beyond the contraints of his old costume.

Sounds like a hoot. But Bird wasn’t content serving up empty laughs.

A genuinely thrilling action comedy that just happened to be lushly animated, The Incredibles made subtle statements about family life, mid-life crises, and personality changes in children as they grow (consider the powers each Parr family member had). Bird also took scalpel-precision aim at megamillion-dollar deep-pockets lawsuits, deep-pocketed corporations that deliberately create unnecessary red tape just to extract profits from loyal customers, and, most of all, a culture in which personal achievement that benefits society at large is discouraged to protect the oh-so-important feelings of people who can’t measure up. And Bird did all of this while being funny as all-get-out.

(If you didn’t view the The Incredibles DVD, here’s something you don’t know: Bird – a married father – originally conceived the opening scene of the film to highlight a backyard barbecue confrontation between Helen Parr (formerly superheroine Elastigirl) and a snooty professional neighbor woman who spoke with dripping disdain about Helen’s choice to be a stay-at-home mom.)

Similarly, with Bird’s Ratatouille, there is much more to it than one can display in a thirty-second ad. Here’s the short version: Young Remy, the rodent protagonist, has more refined tastes than those in his native colony, which is led by his father. He’s not content to eat discarded mystery slop, and rather than forage through rubbish for sustenance, he aspires to get the good stuff – fresh food from inside human dwellings. Although he experiences twinges of guilt for stealing, he manages to grab enough grub to develop a love for combining foods and spices to create new taste sensations.

After a series of events results in Remy’s separation from the colony during a rainstorm with only his favorite cookbook (Anyone Can Cook) to keep him company, he discovers that he has washed up in the sewers of Paris, the home of his favorite chef, the cookbook’s internationally acclaimed author. He heads for the restaurant the chef left behind after his death, and longingly looks through a kitchen window. He is horrified as he sees a newly-hired janitor (with his own epicurean aspirations) ruin a soup by adding the wrong ingredients. Remy sneaks into through the window and fixes the soup, but is captured by the janitor, who perceives that Remy is a better chef than he is. They develop a system that allows Remy to pull the strings for the janitor, who is promoted when patrons rave about his cooking under Remy’s tutelage. I don’t want to give away too much, but suffice to say that before the movie ends, there is romance, betrayal, jealousy, intrigue, madness, tension, revelation, and triumph, with hilarity throughout. (This is not to mention the Pixar family’s reinforcing their reputation for attention to detail in every frame, suitable for hanging.)

But what’s most remarkable about Ratatouille is the way that Brad Bird fuses entertainment and social statement in such a seamless way. Bird gets in short but sharp digs at mindless merchandising (which I believe could have been at least partially inspired by Pixar’s near-divorce from Disney) and, shockingly, the entire concept of the professional critic – a risky thing for a filmmaker to do since he is so dependent on their approval. Most impressive of all is the way Bird deals with the overall theme of what President Bush has referred to as “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” It is my opinion is that if you aren’t too young to comprehend the lessons in scenes in which Remy’s father, family and friends beg him to leave the restaurant, return to the colony, and just accept that they are all “just” rats, you will marvel that they are delivered like a parental tap on the shoulder, not an Aaron Sorkinesque punch in the nose.

The ending is surprising in some ways – it is unlikely you will expect the way it exactly happens – but it is a happy one. It is, of course, a Pixar picture, one suitable for the entire family. I don’t have a family, but if I did, I would take it, and have a discussion about it over dinner. Perhaps the kids could help make dinner. After all, “Anyone Can Cook.”