Film Review: Ratatouille

by Philip Key, Liverpool Daily Post

Ratatouille (Cert U, 111 mins)
Stars the voices of Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Brian Dennehy, Peter O'Toole, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garofalo and Ian Holm
Directed by Brad Bird

CAN you love a rat? After all, the rat has had a bad public image hence such phrases as rat-face, ratty and, of course, love-rat. But you CAN love a rat if his name is Remy and the star of director Brad Bird’s latest animated film Ratatouille.

Bird was responsible for two of the finest animated features of recent years, The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. If anything, Ratatouille is even better.

The theme is food and how sensual and satisfying it can be. Remy is a country rat with a taste for the finer things – he refuses the garbage eaten by his fellow rats – and his sensitive foodie nose is even able to spot rat poison.

When his family of rats is cleared out of a house by a gun-toting granny, Remy gets lost and finds himself taken by sewers to the Paris restaurant of his culinary hero, the chef Gusteau, writer of the best seller Anyone Can Cook.

Unfortunately, Gusteau has died, heart-broken by a bad review from leading (and very nasty) critic Anton Ego and has been replaced by mean-minded Skinner, a chef who has ruined the restaurant’s reputation by concentrating on selling a range of convenience foods. It is here that he is able to help lowly kitchen cleaner Linguini, who spills the soup and tries to recreate it with the wrong ingredients. Remy saves the day by secretly creating a new soup which proves a huge success with a visiting food critic.

Suddenly, the restaurant is back and Linguini is promoted and instructed to recreate the soup. Remy the rat reveals himself and by hiding under Linguini’s chef’s hat and pulling his hair like marionette strings, turns Linguini into a star chef.

Various sub-plots involving romance and crooked dealings bubble away before the big scene in which Ego the critic returns to the restaurant just as all the cooks leave, having learned that their head chef is a rat. While the story is intelligent, and even quite complicated at times, the joy of Ratatouille lies in the sparkling dialogue, loveable characters and, above all, the amazing animation.

There are grand scenes of Paris that look more real than the real Paris, rats with all kinds of expressions and movement, food that looks delicious and chase scenes full of excitement. And there is not a naff song and dance number in sight.

Remy, with his pink nose and big eyes is a delightful creation, and I was not surprised, noting in passing by the Disney Store in Liverpool, that there were soft toys galore in his image. In contrast, Anton Ego (voiced by Peter O’Toole) is a creature of the night, hollow-cheeked and Gothic, like someone out of The Addams Family.

Director Bird also provided the script, which pushes the story along so smartly you hardly notice the 111- minute running time.

This is a film that will genuinely appeal to anyone of any age – you don’t need to take kids but they will love it. And what you will be seeing is one of the greatest animated features of all time.

philkey@dailypost.co.uk