Bird, like the other Pixarians, is working from the Walt Disney playbook. "In a fantasy world where animals can talk, how do they talk? That's the secret of character animation.
Even though it's a completely unbelievable thing, people invest in it," he says. "If we do our job on this one, audiences will empathize with, and invest in, a rat." That's because the creative children at Pixar's Lego- like headquarters in the San Francisco suburb of Emeryville realize that movies, and especially cartoons, are not just talking pictures.
They are motion and emotion pictures. And if you don't have heart, ya ain't got art. There's plenty of both in this rat-out-of-sewer story, which hits U.
S. For Remy (brightly voiced by comedian Patton Oswalt) is your basic outsider. Even with his family, he felt like a connoisseur among food philistines.
They are tough and oafish, satisfied with garbage; he's a devotee of the late, famed chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett) and his mantra, "Anyone can cook." Having lost track of his teeming brood, he arrives at Gusteau's old restaurant, now run by the conniving Skinner (Ian Holm). But Remy's culinary imagination, put into effect by Linguini (Lou Romano) and the comely sous-chef Colette (Janeane Garofalo), will restore the reputation of the place .
.. if only Remy can stay out of sight, and Linguini not be trapped by Skinner's evilest scheme.
From the moment Remy enters, crashing, to the final happy fadeout, parades the brio and depth that set Pixar apart from and above other animation studios. The flood that separates Remy from his family is turbulent, terrifically choreographed, action-movie excitement. The budding Remy-Linguini friendship grows naturally, without clamor or shtick--quite a feat, considering how dense and gauche the young man can be.
The tonal quality is pretty amazing for a CGI movie. The usual harsh plastic visuals are replaced by muted, luscious views of late-afternoon Paris. began with a premise of the movie's original director, Jan Pinkava.
"When I heard this idea about a rat that wants to be a fine chef," Lasseter says, "I thought, 'Wow, this is the most extreme fish-out-of-water story I've ever heard.' Following one's creative passion against everyone telling you, 'No, you can't do this'--that was such an amazing idea." This was to have been the first feature assignment for Pinkava, the Czech-born director of Pixar's Oscar-winning short Geri's Game.
But after a few years, says Lasseter regretfully, "it was just not working out. The leadership and vision in the story were not there." Bird, who had been away from the meetings for a year, finishing The Incredibles, now inundated the group with appealing story ideas.
Eventually, he took over the project, and Pinkava, who still receives story credit, left the company. Wrenching decisions are what Pixarians have to make, just as the exigencies of the market are what they try to ignore. The title, for one thing: it's pronounced rat-a-tooey and refers to a Mediterranean vegetable stew, which not everyone will know or, knowing, will care about.
Bird, like the other Pixarians, is working from the Walt Disney playbook.
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