Anyone can watch this movie!

Rating: 7/10 (31 January 2008)

Ratatouille begins in rural France, an idyllic little cottage nestled away in peaceful Nowhere. Here, Remy the rat (voiced by Patton Oswalt) and his clan lead a relatively trouble-free life, rummaging through an old lady's trash for their dinner and scuttling about in her roof at night. But Remy dreams of more. He has a penchant for food, as opposed to garbage, and idolises a chef he's seen on the TV in Granny's living room, Gusteau (Brad Garrett), and his 5-star restaurant. But Gusteau has died, leaving his business in the hands of uncertainty and a snide little chef named Skinner (brilliant voice work by Ian Holm). Skinner is in the process of selling out Gusteau's to hock microwave food items (Haggis Bites are just one of the "multicultural" delights on offer, along with Chopsocky Pocketsoh dear).
Remy's trouble free life is about to be shattered when he is caught rummaging in the old lady's spice rack late one night. Miffed, Grandma decides to approach the problem not with a rat trap, but with a good ol' fashioned shotgun. As she blasts away the roof caves in, revealing Remy's pals, who have to skitter away into the night lest they be blown to bits. Grabbing his favourite recipe book, wannabe-chef Remy busts out too, but gets separated from his clan during Granny's lunatic, shotgun-blasting pursuit.
Lost in the sewers, he decides to poke his head up, and discovers to his delight he's been lost under Paris, across the road from Gusteau's restaurant! Gusteau's has a new garbage boy, Linguini. Unbeknownst to Skinner and the boy is that Linguini is Gusteau's son. Linguini attempts to fix a soup he accidentally ruined by chucking in random stuff, stirring and hoping for the best. Enter Remy, who has watched in horror the whole time while Linguini "cooked". Remy quickly fixes the soup. Linguini sees him, but is too late to stop the soup going out..to a food critic! To everyone's surprise, it's great. Skinner gives an ultimatum, if Linguini can recreate the soup, he won't be fired for cooking without permission. But Remy is discovered, and Linguini is tasked with getting rid of the rodent, away from the restaurant. Near the canal, Linguini discovers Remy can understand him, and communicate back, so spares his life with the caveat that he help Linguini recreate the soup so he wont be fired. Soon enough they discover Remy can control Linguini like a puppet by pulling his hair ("whoahthat's strangely involuntary!") and the fun keeps rolling from there, but I won't spoil any more.
Ratatouille succeeds in never being preachy, it's message is simple and is never rammed home, like the message of Disney/Pixar predecessor Meet the Robinsons (I walked out of that one quietly muttering to myself like a mental patient'keep moooooooving forwardkeep mooooooving forward.'), and it's a good one: "Anyone can cook." Meaning of course, anyone can do anything they dream of doing, you just gotta get in there and give it a go! The atmosphere is magicParis is shown as a glittering jewel against a still night, and the film is imbued with very soft browns and greens, a touch of red, very ambient and beautiful. The hectic kitchen scenes are brilliant, and capture perfectly the organised chaos of a busy restaurant kitchen. The story cracks along at a pace that will keep the kids enthralled while remaining interesting enough to an adult audience to watch over and over.
The animation is sublime, in some places it looks real. Animators in this field keep outdoing each other. Let's hope that good stories like Ratatouille continue to be the motivation, not just the need to impress and dazzle. Impress and dazzle Ratatouille does, with a great little story as well.