Pixar at the peak of their creativity!

Rating: 10/10 (21 August 2007)

After the partial disappointment of Cars, which was good but not enough by Pixar standards, it is a joy to see the company return to form. In fact, Ratatouille could even be the best picture they have produced so far, beating The Incredibles, Nemo and even Toy Story.
The film wasn't actually as heavily marketed as previous Pixar achievements, possibly because audiences, both young and adult, wouldn't really know what to think of this peculiar movie, which stars a rat. Yes, that's correct, a rat. The rodent's name is Remy (Patton Oswalt), and he is endowed with a particularly powerful nose, which allows him to tell what kinds of food are good or bad based on the smell. This has made him extremely picky when it comes to his diet, and during one of his culinary expeditions he is accidentally separated from his family. After traveling in the sewers for a while, he finds himself in the middle of Paris, the capital of excellent cooking. His joy is only temporary, though, as he discovers that his favorite restaurant (he has seen it on TV) has lost three of its five stars, the first because a nasty food critic named Anton Ego (Peter O' Toole) gave the place a more negative review than usual, the second because the leading chef, Gusteau (Brad Garrett), died of grief. Now the restaurant is in worse shape than ever, as new boss Skinner (Ian Holm) is simply interested in business and doesn't care about the food's quality. Fortunately, Remy, despite being a rat, has taken Gusteau's motto ("Anyone can cook") to heart and, guided by the great chef's ghost, he tries to bring things back to normal, finding an ally in the clumsy but good-hearted Linguini (Lou Romano), through whom he manages to prepare one delicious dish after another, restoring the restaurant's reputation.
The premise might sound far-fetched even for a Disney/Pixar movie, and yet Ratatouille has the best script made for an animated feature in ages: staying faithful to the company's belief that story and character come first, not celebrity voices and pop-culture references (as is the case with Dreamworks' cartoons), writer-director Brad Bird, the man behind The Incredibles), has crafted a screenplay of rare (for a 'toon, that is) sharpness and intelligence, consisting of an intriguing plot, smart gags (including one midway through the movie that should be inappropriate in a G-rated picture but somehow fits neatly into the pitch-perfect narrative) and, most of all, fully developed characters. Whereas most animated films focus on a limited group of people, Pixar has always been famous for giving everyone a moment in the spotlight, and it shows the most in this film: the bond between Remy and Linguini, which is every bit as solid and compelling as the ones between Woody and Buzz or Mike and Sully, is of course at the center of the picture's events, but the initially awkward, then tender relationship between the inept aspiring cook and his coworker Colette (Janeane Garofalo) is equally well built and moving; supporting characters such as Remy's brother and father, who are incapable of understanding his love for proper food, the mischievous Skinner or psychotic cook Horst (voiced by Will Arnett, best known for the hilarious, prematurely canceled Arrested Development), who always has a different explanation for why he used to be in prison (it ranges from "I created a hole in the Ozone layer over Avignon" to "I killed a man... with this thumb!"), provide most of the situation's foolproof humor; as for Ego, to whom O' Toole lends one of the best voices ever to have been used in animation, he stands out as one of the best villains in animated film history (that the makers of such critically adored movies decided to use a critic as the bad guy is another stroke of genius).
Also fundamental is the originality: apart from the obviously unusual pitch (rat turns out to be best chef in France), Ratatouille is a gold-mine of superb material from the splendid start to the exceptional ending, which revives Pixar's trademark surprise element that was missing in Cars. The real surprise, however, is the amount of stuff Bird comes up with in between: most movies, especially action flicks and comedies, run out of ideas at a certain point but keep going because otherwise the running time would be too short (this is evident in the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels which, albeit funny and exciting, were famously, and obviously, written as the shooting went on); in Ratatouille, whenever a joke has run its course it is immediately followed by one exactly as brilliant, thus making the film a seemingly never-ending flow of wit at its sharpest.
Bottom line: after a a partial misfire, Pixar is, thankfully, back on track with the only film that is capable of rivaling The Simpsons Movie as the best animated feature of the year, and that is really saying something.