The film that launched a thousand rats

Rating: 8/10 (6 October 2007)

"Ratatouille", to pick a culinary metaphor, is, like the curate's egg, excellent... in parts. That is, parts of it are excellent, some parts grate, and a good deal of it is good without being especially outstanding. The film has the disarming forethought to get its riposte against criticism in first, in the person of the critic Anton Ego.
But my feelings about this picture are on the whole approbatory, while undoubtedly mixed. I didn't like it as much as "The Incredibles", and, thinking back, I wonder how much of that stems from Pixar being simply less comfortable out of the familiar territory of the American suburbs. A good deal of what grated on me was the perceived Americanisms, from the gun-toting granny to the unsubtle nature of the self-help message (and just what is a 'patootie' or a 'burrito' anyway? 'Corn dog' was at least explained...) The use of accents is also somewhat scattershot: the villains (inevitably) are played by English actors, the rat-heroes (inevitably) are Americans, while the one female speaking role is played with a comedy French accent -- as if the characters were not all (presumably) talking French.
Pixar's animators have obviously spent a lot of time studying rats, as well as -- I would guess -- researching the professional kitchen. These aren't your classic Disney characters with gloved hands, human bodies, and a token animal head and tail. No-one except the owners of pet rats will care that the depiction massively downplays the importance (and size) of the rats' tails and whiskers: a rat's tail is as long as his body and as strong as an extra limb, while he doesn't so much sniff at things as feel them with his impressive 270-degree array of whiskers. My only other caveat would be that the rats in the film seem to spend an awful lot of their time with ears laid back: a real rat's ears are swivelling radar-dishes, high and round and on the alert, and relocating them for most of the shots to a more 'human' position, low down on the head, has a rather odd effect on the characters' expression.
But since I for one am a rat owner, I appreciated the way that Pixar have captured their heels-up scamper and their funny trundling walk, their habit of carrying things with their chins raised, their athletic climbing abilities and above all their superb sense of smell; if anyone could design a new dish for a restaurant simply by sniffing it, it would undoubtedly be a rat! I also appreciated the fact that the rats in this story can't actually talk to the humans -- in fact, there's one shot towards the beginning that makes it plain that all they hear is squeaking. This isn't, as it might have been, the story of a boy who can magically converse with animals; rats and humans have to learn to communicate without words. (It's a tribute to the plot that it didn't even occur to me until after the film was over that it was in any way odd that the rats, on the other hand, could not only understand but read every word the humans used!) The process by which Remy discovers that he can remote-control Linguini is, I suppose, ridiculous in a real-life context, but seemed to make sense at the time...
Plot-wise, I found the start of the film fairly slow, with all the emotional depth of your average Mickey Mouse, though I did like the concept of the rats' having an organised escape plan. The main picture was preceded by a brief short centred around the quintessential US theme of alien abduction, which had the young audience in stitches but which I'm afraid I failed to find funny in the least -- slapstick cruelties were never my thing -- and this may have jaundiced me.
Things looked up once Remy reached Paris, although I found the heavy moral emphasis on the theft of a crumb absurd from a rodent view: how else can a rat eat? Plough his own fields, sow his own wheat, set up his own bakery? In the context of the rest of the story, "Don't foul your own nest" might have been more apt than "Thou shalt not steal".
The turn of events by which Remy becomes an undercover cook is effective, funny and strangely plausible, and from this point the film's quality remains fairly consistent throughout. One bonus is that there is no quasi-obligatory zany sidekick character; the nearest this film comes is in the shape of Remy's brother, and he doesn't get much screen time. But then generally speaking I didn't care much for the 'family' scenes. They mostly seemed to consist of spelling out moral messages in letters a yard high, plus the usual father-son bond fixation.
Towards the end the film makes some brave choices, and it is at this point that it rises into the category of 'excellent' and gains some actual emotional depth. It doesn't stop with the fairy-tale ending of the rightful heir, nor yet with the victory over the ogre. The name of the film turns out to be highly significant after all, and our heroes are rewarded not by a pinnacle of magic inheritance, but with fruits of their own earning. A warning: there are some scenes at this point that may be genuinely distressing to young children... as opposed to the cartoon violence of the opening, at which they merely roared with laughter...
The pictures of dead rats -- far more realistic than the cartoon-type characters -- I myself found very hard to bear because one of my own pets had died the previous day; the half-open mouth and fragile, curled limbs were the last I'd seen of her, too. I didn't weep when I buried her body, but there were several places during this film about rats when I missed her horribly. Which is, I suppose, a salute to its success.