Ok, here is my first official post. It's my first time, so be gentle.
So far, I have only seen Ratatouille four times. Why do I say "only"? Because Ratatouille bears up so well to repeated viewings. Like the fine wines featured in it, it gets better with age. Where to begin?
Well, for starters the animation. When computers first come onto the animation scene, I was chiefly impressed with them for their ability to render dimensionality to objects. The titular toys of Toy Story fit this description. They did't look like animated toys moving, they looked like real toys moving. The actual human beings of the film however, looked well, less than stellar. The actual animation, in terms of movement, fluidity, squash and stretch, and all the fundamental animation principles, was simply lacking in computer animated flims. Oh sure, they were good films, very entertaining to watch, with fantastic stories, but I never paid any real attention to the animation of the films. Certainly not the way I did with any of the great Disney films (both modern and classic), or any of the Looney Toons cartoons. That however, has all completely changed with Ratatouille. I remember when Disney released the nine minute preview online. I was blown away by it! Here was a ghost character floating, and moving with fluidity and grace. A rat that moved in an animalistic way, and not like a human being on all fours. There were fires, surprises, gags, an amazing Michael Giacchino score that managed to sound French without smelling like a three-day old sock (how's that for a mixed metaphor?). And the acting! Oh the way Remy was able to actually act was amazing. You actually felt for this little guy. He was a rat, but you were right there with him. And when he and Linguini talked, oh man, you really believed they were developing a relationship, despite its blatant absurdity. It was animation at its best. Then I went to see the full film.
And it was a feast! Not a literal feast, but a visual one. Not a detail was missed. All the pots were used and worn out. The fog looked like cold and dense (I live in San Francisco, I'm an expert on fog), Fire looked hot and potentially dangerous. Everything looked simply perfect. And the characters. Oh man, this had some of the best designed characters ever. My personal favorite is M. Ego. He has such a chill about him. Evil, but pretentious. Deadly, but sophisticated. Were he in another film, about a different story, he would have made an excellent vassal of the devil, or possibly the devil himself. He was so well-designed, that when he first shows up on screen my seven-year-old cousin gasped, and reached for my arm when I saw it with him. That is a characters that read well! And that goes for all the rest of them, they look like their personalities. Linguine looks like he could a few generations removed from Chaplin, but somehow the genes for physical comedy remained intact. Skinner is such a greasy slimeball, and his lawyer may be the greatest designed money-grubbing, dishonest. French lawyer of all time.
As for the story and the film itself, the only thing I can think to compare it to is Hayao Miyazaki's work. I know John Lasseter is good friends with him, and that whenever they're stuck at Pixar they watch one of his films, but in all honesty, the greatest filmmaker at Pixar is Brad Bird. In fact, I think he's one of the greatest filmmakers working today period. Both for animation and live-action. The film had a great honesty about it. Nothing in it is cheap. The ending isn't cheaply easy. It's worked for and completely natural. And none of thne preceding struggle is cheaply difficult. No one in the film is forced to go through anything that isn't a natural outgrowth of who they are, and where they started in the film. There are some revelations that are a bit gratuitous and a few lucky coincidences, but that's the way all stories are. Go read Les Miserables sometime, and see what I'm talking about. Having said how natural the film is, it's also very surprising. It's natural, but you really couldn't have guessed many of the things that happen in it. Brad Bird has said the film "when you think it's gonna go right, it goes left," and he's right. There were several difficult scenes in it, that Brad stuck with, that he didn't magically resolve, but let them sit with the audience. The film is, in a word, brilliant, By far, Pixar's finest film.
I would be remiss if I didn't mention Michael Giacchino's wonderful score. He took many, many diverse sounds and managed to unify them. The score goes from sinister rat music, to cartoony escape music, to tango, to gypsy jazz, to chanson français, to romantic vistas of Paris, and even a little Gershwin influence just for good measure. All given that great Giacchino/Bird, 60's spin. Henry Mancini would be proud. In fact, I'm ready to beg Michal Giacchino to just release a jazz album. I love his scores so much, I'd like to see what he could do if he really let loose, and didn't have to support any images on the screen. Just him and his band making music just to sound cool. I'd buy it up in a second.
If I had one complaint about Ratatouille, and I think I can only must one, it would be the voiceover. While I have nothing against voiceovers, in Ratatouille it was a bit jarring. It didn't happen often enough that it become a motif, but it wasn't so infrequent that it was merely a framing device. It ended up seeming more like a crutch that they went to when they couldn't figure out any other way of converying the necessary information. Having said that I would still highly, highly recommend the film. I think it's the best movie I've seen all year. And probably will stay that way. So go on. Have some Ratatouille.
