Serves your heart up on a platter

Rating: 9/10 (6 November 2014)

At first, many might simply take this as a crazy film where a rat cooks food with cliché french characters. But it is so much more for those who feel trapped outside the kitchen where they believe they belong.
Pixar's team have something extra ordinary in making these films. It's nothing to do with the clarity of visuals, the fast pace of the character development, the crystal clear audio or the jokes at sophisticated level that makes cartoons more introspective & emotionally valuable than other films. It's the stories they tell that makes them so powerful. And this particular title is NO exception.
This film throws SO many punches at your soul. And maybe I'm just on my own here, but by the end of it, I am a quivery mess of tears & memories.
I can relate to the outcast dilemma of being hopeful when surrounded by mundane people who take pride in making you feel like some sort of traitor for setting dreams as a paramount pursuit. The burning relentless torture of that desire to create, as though art runs through your veins. And the inherent loneliness you submerge yourself into by perpetuating these thoughts. It doesn't matter that he's a rat. I feel his pain as though it were my own.
I can relate straight away to the young boy, desperate to find a job, a home, a family & reach for a purpose that might offer an argument to an otherwise pointless life. It's helped with slapstick to easy the load off of my mind! But not for long, because then we see a modern day brotherhood between unsuspecting friends whose opposing circumstances in life doesn't stop them from relying on each other.
However, these are mere flee bitings compared with the next real life comparisons. Living up to your farther's reputation & expectations can be an impossible struggle. We have the girl who walks out on the boy, but who actually comes back - a rare breed these days! But nothing wrenched my heart out as much as the final scene where something made with love reminds the critic of the love & the memory of his mother & her cooking. Our senses are so much more than tools for perception. Inside every human is a wealth of happy memories we all look back on with a certain amount of sadness & nostalgia, & every so often we are reminded of these people that mean so much to us that they are a part of us. Something as infinitesimal as tasting a piece of food can relate to a thousand memories we strive to keep locked up.
This film & others by the Pixar Disney team open the flood gates to these fundamental emotions & let us revel in them so we can remember the most important experiences in our lives.
Others can talk about the visuals, & the voice acting & all that. But for me, this story cracked me open like an egg, scrambled my emotions, & dish me up a side helping of laughter too!
My only complaint would be that it had to end at one point.