Place Your Order Now for Ratatouille is Delectable!

Rating: 10/10 (23 March 2015)

I could go on for hours about the delights of Ratatouille. The animation is superb, the vocals flawless, the script witty, the central dilemma between family ties and the pursuit of excellence subtly handled. Its jokes (all of them brilliant), its conflict (all of it rousing), its every move springs from this simple fact: Ratatouille has heart.
Wisely returning to form after the lackluster Cars, the story is delightfully ludicrous. Born with an acute sense of smell and taste, young Remy, a Parisian rat (Patton Oswalt) squirms at the idea of eating moldy crusts and soggy table scraps. He's acquired a taste for the finer things largely thanks to his favorite gastronome Chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett), who's crafted a career and a five-star establishment from his copy written tagline: "Anyone can cook!" His sole pleasure is food and he dreams of culinary glory working as a fine French chef, but needs a front man who won't cause screams in the kitchen. He soon hooks up with the timid scullery hand Linguini (Lou Romano), a garbage boy with no noticeable gustatory talent who's willing to play puppet to Remy's puppeteer in order to keep his job and, secretly, to pursue a pretty sous-chef. Out to nail the new mystery chef is a pallid, joyless food critic, Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole) who is irate that an establishment he has relegated to the lower echelons is making a comeback.
Verging on the surreal - if not downright psychedelic - Ratatouille takes place in a highly believable universe that looks and behaves a lot like our own. In the world of Ratatouille, as in ours, rats are gross, humans are boss and cross-species tolerance is a dream. But Brad Bird gives us the most distasteful setup imaginable – Rats in the kitchen! Not only touching the food, but preparing it - and turns it around into something absolutely delectable. You expect kitchen slapstick; you get something that's closer to kitchen ballet, with food so seductively animated you can tell stale bread from fresh. More than that, you get a story with real strum and a lot of heart. Patton Oswalt lends a certain degree of vulnerability and sympathy to the main character, and the supporting cast of Brad Garrett and John Ratzenberger fill out the film well. Peter O'Toole is sublimely sneering as the ominous food critic Anton Ego.
Ratatouille is an intricate dish, infused with energetic and amusing story lines that are all fully cooked and complementary to the film's rich visual look. Bring your hardiest appetite. Ratatouille is immensely satisfying!