A progression for cgi animated movies

Rating: 10/10 (7 July 2007)

Ratatouille - Alright, this movie really surprised me, but I also wasn't too surprised that it did with legendary Brad Bird behind the movie. First of all I'd like to congratulate this movie and Brad Bird for trying to break the mold of animation and the preconceived notion that it's only for kids. This movie has an adult vibe to it; little kids probably won't know whats going on half the time and won't understand half of the words. And I love it because of that. If you liked The Incredibles you will probably like the way this movie was done.
Second of all, the story and character development are outstanding. I haven't really seen characters (such as Remy and Linguini) progress and develop so much within a movie. Their character changes after all of the events and its great -- very realistic.
You know the endless flood of terrible GCI movies coming out lately that never seem to get any better? Ratatouille isn't one of them. Almost no pop-culture references are to be found, which is very refreshing with all of the Dreamworks crap coming out lately (Shark Tale anyone?). I hate it how movies these days try to cash in on the latest Hollywood gossip and pop-culture and every CGI movie coming out never trays far from the Shrek-ified mold. Like Richard Roeper said, Ratatouille is actually going to be timeless because of this.
This movie had comedy and great storyboard work galore. It wasn't over-the-top funny like Transformers, but it was more of a controlled and fitting type of humor -- it didn't distract from the story too much and it made sense. The scenes were well presented and the camera following the rat through all those little pathways was amazing. It may not have had very much noise and action, but it was definitely a finely crafted delicacy (pardon the pun) of a movie.