An Insulting Movie

Rating: 2/10 (10 January 2008)

Let's start with the good. Ratatouille is a well-animated, well-produced film. And the short at the beginning was hilarious, as those beginning shorts usually are. Throw in adult-sounding French dishes, and apparently that is enough for most of reviewers and critics. But I can't imagine it's enough for most kids. I took my little cousin to see the movie a while back at the drive-in, so it was impossible to see the reactions of other children. But for us, the movie just failed on every level besides appearance.
The jokes in the movie run from mind-numbingly stupid, to mind-numbingly pretentious. It's almost as if two movies were created. One to insult the intelligence of children, the other to please the refined palate of French cuisine experts. This left my cousin bored, and me angry. There's no middle ground here. It's clear the creators thought children would be amused by a talking animal enough to ignore the emptiness of the movie and the complete lack of thought put into the actual story. Which is extremely surprising, given the excellent job Brad Bird did on Iron Giant.
As for the actors, Patton Oswalt gives a decent performance, enough to make his character memorable. But he's not good enough by any means to salvage the film. The rest of the characters are forgettable stereotypes of women, geeks, the French, etc. There's nothing about the characters that makes them unique. Their stories are cookie-cutter clichés.
The plot concerns the adventures of Remy, a rat who dreams of meeting and emulating his brilliant chef idol. Of course, Remy's refined tastes don't fit in well with the eat-absolutely-anything crowd he has grown up around. Remy soon finds himself separated from his family, and into the life of a young chef, who is secretly the illegitimate son of the very same guy Remy idolized. Oh, and buy the way, that guy died, and Remy sees him from time to time, in what we can only assume are brief episodes of schizophrenia. Throw in a few scenes of diseased rats cooking meals, and I can see how kids must love this movie! I imagine the movie is a hit in the food critic/elitist film buff crowd. But don't let your children see this garbage. If you want to see a good talking rat movie, watch Flushed Away.