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Bookmark this pageRatatouille (2007)
Director: Brad Bird
Synopsis
There's a rat in the kitchen in this Disney film.
Movie review
From Time Out London
The title of Pixar’s fabulous latest animation gives you its three elegantly dovetailed elements: rodents, food and French. Co-director Jan Pinkava’s original idea was sweetly ridiculous – can a naive, ambitious rat (baby-eyed Remy, charmingly voiced by Patton Oswalt), long inspired by his reading of a famous French chef’s recipe book, realise his dream to become a chef? This has been turned by its final director, Brad ‘The Incredibles’ Bird, into one of the most witty, clever, gently moral, dramatically convincing and visually stimulating family entertainments of the year. The animation is extraordinary too, and occasionally breathtaking. It’s so enticing, in fact, that card-carrying anti-anthropomorphists like this reviewer can readily accept its ‘big ask’: not onlya talking rodent but one able to make a celebrity chef out of his hopeless human helpmeet (the docile, disaster-zone Linguini, voiced by Lou Romano) by jerking his hair from inside his hat, like a Pinocchio pulling his master’s strings. It’s a tribute to the film’s tonal and directorial control, not to mention its sympathy, detail, intelligence and lack of pretension, that such subtextual sub-currents and metaphors – be they the immigrant experience à la ‘American Tail’, digs at McBurger food ethics or the assignation of artistic credit – never obscure its pleasures. Those pleasures are found in its vivid characters (such as its frightening Snow White-style villain, the power-crazed Anton Ego, a food critic with the features of a Gothic Will Self and the voice of Peter O’Toole), richness of ideas and daring sense of fun. A test for tiny tots, a mite nostalgic and as male-dominated as a modern kitchen it may be, but these are mere quibbles about this delightful addition to the Pixar pantheon.
Author: Wally Hammond
Time Out London Issue 1938: October 10-16 2007
User reviews of this film
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- roza said...
- Posted on Oct 08 2007 11:06 rats are horrible creatures but i like the movie and mice
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- sks said...
- Posted on Oct 08 2007 11:04 rats are clean creatures and i love them i have 3
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- hayley mccabe said...
- Posted on Oct 06 2007 21:30 What a riduclas review its only a cartoon why does he have to take it so seriously we all know that rats are dirty and full of disease but not in a cartoon.
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- ken said...
- Posted on Aug 09 2007 10:08 Mr Rothkoph accuses Brad Bird of being muddled, now there's irony for you.
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- Art said...
- Posted on Aug 08 2007 18:44 Totally lame. This is no 'review' more a personal polemic claiming to have 'seen' the film.Rubbish.
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- H G said...
- Posted on Aug 06 2007 22:39 What an awful, ridiculous review.
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- Joe said...
- Posted on Jul 31 2007 21:25 Very average film. Pixar by numbers. Very little charm. No decent characters.
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- Jonty said...
- Posted on Jul 31 2007 21:09 Terrible Review.
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- Dave said...
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Posted on Jul 10 2007 19:30
If the rats are clean (or are inside the hat of a clean human), then what would be gross about them preparing food?
Nothing. And that's exactly the point of the film, a moral that you can literally describe but fail to understand. - Report as inappropriate
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- Ken said...
- Posted on Jul 09 2007 14:26 Utter rubbish of a review.
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Cast & crew
Director: Brad Bird
Producer: Brad Lewis
Genre(s): Children's, Comedy
Rated: U
Duration: 111 mins
UK Release: Oct 12 2007
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