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Review: “Ratatouille”
By Kyle | June 29, 2007
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FOODYLICIOUS!ÂÂ
Kyle Smith review of Ratatouille
Rated G; opens nationwide today
I would have loved to have been present during the pitch meeting for “Ratatouille.” “It’s, um, a little bit ‘Willard,’ a little bit ‘Like Water for Chocolate’”! Awkward pause. “So can we go spend $100 million, please?”ÂÂ
Wise investment, because the Pixar/Disney feature “Ratatouille” turns out to be the greatest rat movie and the greatest food movie ever. Like “Happy Feet,” “Meet the Robinsons” and writer-director Brad Bird’s earlier film “The Incredibles,” it’s part of a new generation of ambitious animated features with more drama than comedy. All of these movies pay kids the compliment of teaching them big ideas. Of the two big-budget movies opening this weekend, “Live Free or Die Hard” is the cartoon.
Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) is a rat living in the French countryside with a gift–he’s a connoisseur who can instantly sniff out the rind that has rat poisoning–that is also a problem. Ambition doesn’t look good on a rat, and what Remy wants is to be a chef. His idol is the late master Gusteau–nice pun for this gustatory Cousteau–who died soon after his flagship restaurant was downgraded from five stars to four because of a sudden infestation of noxious vermin: the critic Anton Ego (an icy and marvelous Peter O’Toole), who slammed the eatery in a review.
Gusteau lives on in Remy’s imagination, exhorting him to follow his dreams and go for the greatness. Remy’s brother Emile and his father push him the other way: to follow his nose and go for the garbage. A rat is a rat, they say: Why fight it? There’s plenty to eat out in the street, but trying to raid the pantry is liable to land your tail in a steel trap.ÂÂ
Separated from the rest of the rats, Remy winds up in Gusteau’s Paris restaurant, where the new owner runs what is now only a 3-star joint. His main interest is in using Gusteau’s legend to hawk frozen foods as if they were gourmetsicles–Tooth Pick’n Chicken, Gusteau’s Chop-Socky Pockets, whatever. The late Gusteau is now on a par with another chef–”Monsieur Boy-Ar-Dee.” Having read Gusteau’s book “Anyone Can Cook”–that title is typical of the movie’s pluck–Remy runs us rat-a-tat through kitchen lore, atmosphere and vocabulary (plongeur? The garbage boy, Linguini, voiced by Lou Romano). This movie should be reviewed on the food page, because you can practically smell and taste everything Remy does: new rosemary, aged cheese, ripe strawberries, lush soups. You can tell a great bread, we learn, by how it sounds, and the velcro crackle of a crusty loaf being broken will make you sorry if you didn’t eat before the movie. Meanwhile: the new owner has an idea: why not come up with a new line of corn dogs? ÂÂ
The nervous Linguini is the son of Gusteau’s old girlfriend and might even be the heir to the restaurant. The new owner would thus lose the place, so he’s determined to bury any infomation that might make Linguini look like Gusteau’s son. Young Linguini wants to be a chef, but he couldn’t boil water without secret guidance from Remy the rat. Thanks to Remy, who stations himself underneath Linguini’s toque controlling his every move by yanking on his hair, Linguini becomes a celebrated cook himself. That makes him likely to be a target of not only the new owner but of Colette, the kitchen’s only female worker; of the sous-chef (who is rumored to have done time because ”I robbed the second largest bank in France using only a ballpoint pen” or maybe because “I killed a man–with this thumb!”) and of course of Ego the critic. Ego has lately considered Gusteau’s place beneath contempt but now might be lured back by the buzz–to destroy the restaurant’s reputation all over again.
Remy’s quest for excellence is magnificently done; he stands in for all artists who take risks–only he is staking his life. “I want to make things,” he says. “I want to add something to this world.” Asked which way he is going, he says, “With luck, forward.” Walt Disney would have adored the theme of hard-won optimism, which also made “Meet the Robinsons” a delight earlier this year. ÂÂ
If there is an Ayn Rand School for Tots like the one Maggie once escaped from on “The Simpsons ” (for which Brad Bird used to work), its mandatory texts must be “The Incredibles” and this movie. Anton Ego, a critic who looks like he runs a funeral parlor for all the dreams he’s murdered, is an Addams Family version of Ellsworth Toohey from Rand’s “The Fountainhead;” when Linguini kisses his colleague Colette, she is so blown away that she drops her can of Mace, which seems like a parody of the famous date rape encounter in “The Fountainhead;” Colette calls false modesty just another way to lie (Rand, in “Atlas Shrugged”: “This, she knew, was a tribute to her, the rarest one person could pay another, the tribute of feeling free to acknowledge one’s own greatnessâ€Â); and there is a lone-wolf twist to the Disney lost-child formula. Remy, like Rand’s heroes, is driven by his own creation urge, regardless of community approval. He won’t go back to his family; they must come to him.
The film’s title isn’t just a pun: A passionately made plate of the “peasant dish” served at the climax inspires a speech in damnation of critics that is pure Rand, though it’s odd to hear Bird, the man who made the universally-acclaimed “The Incredibles,” take a swing at those who helped make him with our hosannas. I also don’t agree with the view that “a piece of junk” is more valuable than any critique because at least it’s a thing, not just a discussion. What about the stuff that doesn’t even aspire to quality, like half the movies produced by the studio that released this film? Does Disney’s “Stick It” really beat top-grade Anthony Lane? Moreoever, filmmakers ascribe to critics more power than we really have. We’re just informed audience members; our opinions are valued only if they come close to the truth.
Still, I found the speech about critics to be touching and important; those reviewers who have never created a book or a film or a painting or a CD for public delectation or abomination must always wonder whether they have earned their front-row seats.  And with one surprising and wonderful image, Bird shows us how far Ego has left behind his childlike capacity for joy. Thanks to movies like this one, that hasn’t happened to me.
Topics: Movies |
July 3rd, 2007 at 3:35 pm
Kyle,
Where can we get a copy of Anton Egos nice speech at the end? His review of the new Gusteaus.
July 4th, 2007 at 12:02 am
I don’t know. It’s probably a bit too long to take it down in notes while viewing it. I suppose we can hope the script gets published, as is sometimes the case.
July 10th, 2007 at 7:37 pm
Kyle - Here you go - thanks to IMDB:
Anton Ego: In many ways, the work of a critic is easy. We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. But the bitter truth we critics must face is that, in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. Last night, I experienced something new, an extraordinary meal from a singularly unexpected source. To say that both the meal and its maker have challenged my preconceptions is a gross understatement. They have rocked me to my core. In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau’s famous motto: Anyone can cook. But I realize that only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere. It is difficult to imagine more humble origins than those of the genius now cooking at Gusteau’s, who is, in this critic’s opinion, nothing less than the finest chef in France. I will be returning to Gusteau’s soon, hungry for more.
July 12th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
[...] Ratatouille–You can practically smell and taste this animated billet-doux about fine [...]
August 9th, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Ayn Rand? I thought, maybe brilliant parody? No. Not parody. Bye.
September 14th, 2007 at 2:44 pm
a plongeur is a dishwasher, not a “garbage boy” (it literally means “diver”)
December 31st, 2007 at 3:36 pm
[...] list: 1. The Diving Bell and the Butterfly 2. Once 3. Knocked Up 4. Into the Wild 5. Superbad 6. Ratatouille 7. No Country for Old Men 8. The Lives of Others 9. Margot at the Wedding 10. Meet the [...]