Kitchen rat cooks

Rating: 7/10 (8 January 2008)

Eww, rats in a restaurant. Well if it's an animated restaurant, where the story is just told for entertainment purposes, then this movie succeeded. I must admit, seeing that many rats (even if animated), can be disturbing. Once they started speaking English in Paris, and gave the little rodents characteristics comprehensible to humans, then the fear of animated rats in the animated kitchen subsided. I'll give the writers credit for disallowing the main character, Remy the rat, from speaking to Linguini, but only gestures to him on how to cook. The movie is sometimes implausible, and yet the story has an innate charm to hold your attention. This maybe an animated film, but it's also undoubtedly a "food" movie, with Remy being inspired by Chef Gusteau, the pleasures of fine dining. It is also somewhat of a morale lesson, in that, Chef Gusteau as a "ghost" supplies Remy with more than the fine art of cooking. I'd have to disagree that this is a classic Disney tale. No one dies and there's no rain. Even the chief villain (the food critic Ego) has a happy ending. It is however, a very well made animated feature with super cooking rodents.