Ratatouille

-

Released in time for the school holidays, Ratatouille is the latest animated collaboration from Pixar and Disney. It’s also the latest from writer-director Brad Bird, the man behind Pixar’s instant superhero classic The Incredibles, as well as Warner Brother’s touching The Iron Giant.

Ratatouille follows Pixar’s story-strong tradition. Plot and taunt action sequences are prioritised ahead of wackiness, outdated pop culture references, an obvious celebrity voice cast and fart jokes – which seem to have become staples in today’s 3D animation genre. Ratatouille’s focus on storytelling is a refreshing change, particularly for audiences older than 8 years old.


If you’ve seen the trailer, then you’ll have a pretty good idea what Ratatouille is about. In a twist of fate, Remy, a rat with amazing culinary instincts, finds himself living under Gusteau’s, a Parisian restaurant that has seen its fortunes decline since the death of its iconic chef owner.

All Remy wants to do is cook, but when his presence in the kitchen is met with unsurprising disgust, he has to settle for an unusual alliance with Linguini, a young, hopelessly clumsy, wannabe chef. Rat and human secretly work together, reinventing Gusteau’s menu while dodging the suspicious head chef, and an impossible-to-please food critic.

It’s customary in animated movies these days to wow audiences with imaginative depictions of “new worlds” never seen onscreen before. Dreamworks’ rival rat film, Flushed Away created a mini Piccadilly Circus in the London sewers that mirrored its human equivalent. By contrast, the “new world” Ratatouille presents and explores onscreen is that of gourmet cooking. It’s likely that after watching Ratatouille you’ll feel inspired to rush home and create your own culinary masterpiece. Or at least try.


As for the film’s animation, it’s impossible to flaw Pixar as usual. Ratatouille’s creative team have embraced a stylised, cartoony look, which is highly enjoyable to watch. Skeletal food critic Anton Ego (menacingly voiced by Peter O’Toole) and his bleak, elongated surroundings, have been especially well realised. At the same time, in scenes where rats interact with humans, the rodents’ movements, such as the way they crouch, all bristled up, show impressive, realistic attention to detail.

Like Cars it’s debatable how much enjoyment very young children will get from Ratatouille, and the film does lag a little towards the end. Otherwise it’s a real treat, the best animated rodent movie since The Secret of NIMH.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is the rebooted Lara Croft gay? Evidence for and against...

-
Image
As some of you know, I’ve been fangirling hard over the new Tomb Raider , the first entry in the video game series since 2008, and ostensibly a reboot for the entire franchise . Taking the form of an origin story, Tomb Raider 2013 depicts the events that transformed a beautiful, if bookish, archaeology graduate into a pistol-packing adventurer with a devil-may-care attitude. We meet Lara Croft as a pretty, fairly ordinary 21 year old, brooding over her work notes, listening to her mp3 player and very much confined to the shadow of her male mentors. By the end of the game, however, she’s taken charge – she’s had to! – and, battered, bruised and bloody, she’s both a survivor and hero, right down to rescuing the princess and carrying her away in her arms. Yeah, this is probably the best point to mention that there will be some Tomb Raider 2013 spoilers in this post, so read ahead with caution. Anyway, I loved the game. Technically it’s near faultless, it looks beautiful, the ov...
Read more

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider and Queer Icon (Part 4)

-
Image
Part 4: The mystery of Lara Croft’s sexuality “Now what’s a man gotta do to get that kind of attention from ya?” – Larson Conway (Tomb Raider, 1996) Despite being an icon for many queer pop culture consumers, Lara Croft’s own sexual orientation remains ambiguous. Outside of the Top Cow comics and live-action films – where Lara is blatantly heterosexual, with a fondness for slightly scruffy bad boys (who keep betraying and hurting her) – the character comes across as primarily asexual. Kurtis Trent is the only male figure who even comes close to being a love interest in the game series. Lara's apparent sexual disinterest is despite the adventurer appearing very sexually attractive herself; a figure of desire with bee-stung lips, voluptuous breasts, toned stomach and impossibly long, athlete’s legs. Yet Lara is never dominated by sexual yearnings or romantic affections. She is very much in control of herself at all times. It’s worth noting, however, that over time th...
Read more

Ladies I Love: Part 2 - Rhona Mitra

-
Image
Following on from the first post in this series , you may realise that I have a very definite type. Anyway, today we profile model-turned-actress Rhona Mitra . This 36 year old Briton is of English, Irish and Indian descent. You'll have seen her pop up on the big and small screen multiple over the past decade and a half, although Mitra's claim to fame is that she was the second ever model (some say first if you rule out "unofficial"  Nathalie Cook ) to play iconic video game character Lara Croft . From 1997-1998, Mitra could be found in PR material, as well as at trade shows, events and conventions as a flesh-and-blood embodiment of Tomb Raider 's kick-ass archeologist lead. There have been many official Lara Croft models over the years , but as far as I'm concerned Mitra remains the best. In my mind, of all of them, she most closely resembles the video game character in terms of facial features. Plus she comes from money and had a rebellious boarding...
Read more