More movie showtimes, photos and trailers NO ONE WANTS to see a rat running around in a kitchen. But in "Ratatouille," a rat dreams of being a great chef. Not whipping up garbage ganache or compost compotes for others in the rat universe, mind you, but gourmet cooking for humans.
The premise of Pixar's latest animated movie is so counterintuitive, you wonder if the filmmakers deliberately set a Herculean task for themselves just to see how good they actually are. If so, director Brad Bird and his creative team pass their own test with flying colors. "Ratatouille" manages to elevate a rat named Remy to star status -- no mere Templeton he -- and leave us both satisfied by the story and craving a good meal.
Remy (Patton Oswalt) would be content to cook for his rat brethren, if they weren't so intent on eating garbage. He understands the marriage of flavors and the beauty of fresh ingredients. When he finds a mushroom in the woods, he wants to combine it with chevre.
"And saffron," he muses, his ugly rat nose wiggling with delight. Circumstances conspire to lead Remy to a Parisian perch overlooking Gusteau's, a restaurant so famous even a rat knows about it. Further plot twists land Remy atop the curly head of Linguini (Lou Romano) the kitchen's hapless garbage boy, who is happy to serve as the conduit for the rat's innate cooking talent.
Gusteau's kitchen, with its gleaming copper pots, black and white tiles and imposing stoves, is both a miracle of animation and the highest form of kitchen porn. Our first glimpse of it is at rat level, as Remy dodges one near-death experience after another while trying to salvage a soup Linguini has inadvertently ruined. Every detail is just right.
The door to the walk-in makes that distinctive sucking sound. So distinct is the kitchen tumult from the muffled elegance of the dining room, the passage through the double doors into the restaurant seems like entry into a different time zone. It should come as no surprise that the French Laundry's Thomas Keller, one of America's more famous celebrity chefs, served as a consultant on the film.
Think of the research dinners he, Bird and Jan Pinkava, who came up with the original story, must have had in Paris. There's a special poignancy to the fact that Remy ends up at Gusteau's. The chef-owner, Gusteau (voiced by Brad Garrett), now deceased, has already been something of a mentor to him (and as a ghost, continues to be).
It was Gusteau's cookbook "Anyone Can Cook," that inspired Remy; it also serves him, quite literally, as a life raft at one point. Gusteau died of a broken heart, after being downgraded from four to three stars by bitter restaurant critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole), a reference to real French chef Bernard Loiseau, who killed himself in 2003 amid rumors that he was about to lose a Michelin star. (He had just slipped in the Gault Milleau rankings.
) Paying homage to Loiseau is a sweet move by Bird, who also wrote the screenplay. Another nice touch is his resoluteness in portraying Remy et al as real rats rather than cartoon cuties. When you see them moving en masse, they are thoroughly disgusting.
The fact that Bird finds a way out of a story that posits a rat as the brightest new talent on the Parisian cooking scene would be impressive enough; the fact that he does it while saying something moving about the transformative power of taste is marvelous. Pixar also deserves credit for valuing story over star power. Some of you may have heard of Patton Oswalt, who voices Remy, but he's no Justin Timberlake, and the fact that he isn't allows us to see Remy as a created character, not as a shadow of some familiar celebrity.
O'Toole plays one villain and Ian Holm the other (a nasty bite-sized chef named Skinner), but what you notice is the skill of the performer, not the identity. A quibble: The film is G rated. But those parents who are trying to keep guns out of the consciousness of their small children for as long as possible, be warned, there are two gun scenes in "Ratatouille," one short, funny and probably easy for a kid to miss.
But the other involves many shots directed at Remy and Emile, reloading, loud noises, etc. In a movie that takes the time and care to remind us of how fast a small animal's heart beats when it's frightened, you wonder why more care wasn't taken in finding an alternate weapon for the old lady brandishing that gun (why not a broom?) Nonetheless, "Ratatouille," ranks up there with the best of Pixar's best, joining "Nemo," "Monsters, Inc.
" and "Toy Story" (1 and 2) in the ranks of instant classics. It's a reminder of how good "kids'" entertainment can be. As a story about using a special creative gift to bring pleasure to others, it is also, in a sense, a Pixar autobiography.
Pols is the Times movie critic. Reach her at 925-945-4741 or mpols@cctimes.com.
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