Good movie but could have been better

Rating: 7/10 (30 December 2009)

Ratatouille is a good entertaining movie in the Pixar tradition. The rich imagery of the copper pots and pans, the Paris skyline, and the food which looks so good you could taste it are all superbly animated. Along with an amusing ensemble of rats and an "evil" food critic who turns out surprisingly sympathetic at the end.
However my main complaint is a horrible, unlikable, moron of a main character who undergoes absolutely no character growth through the course of the film. The "slapstick" scenes of the mouse pulling his hair like a marionette are creepy rather than funny. SPOILER: When we find out the lead human is really the illegitimate son of the deceased master chef I had expected that the plot was going to lead to the mouse awakening some latent ability in him and having him mature into a great chef himself. But alas in the end he remains just the same bungling, inept moron that he begins with. This lack of character maturation and creepy, gross slapstick was a major flaw in the plot, I really wish the writers had taken a different direction. I also wish there was some other less disgusting way to have had the rat influence the cooking other than the "hair pulling" i.e. perhaps just talking to him, this is a cartoon after all. Then this could have been a 9 out of 10 film rather than the 7 of 10 I am giving it.