movies: ratatouille

I'll be honest... I wasn't expecting a whole lot from Ratatouille...

Pixar's last couple of excursions weren't THAT great (Incredible and Cars, I'm looking at you)... but this one actually exceeded my expectations (possibly because, as I said, I wasn't expecting much... I dunno).

Before I go any further though, I have to take my hat off to Lifted, the "short" that appeared before the main movie... I really like this idea of the short... they can show off an idea that doesn't have (or need) the fleshing out of a full length movie, and I assume people who wouldn't ordinarily get a look in as a director can cut their teeth on one of these mini movies. They obviously learned their lesson about just having these things essentially "silent" from previous instances though... you just get it without the need for words. And Lifted is just plain funny.

Getting back to our feature presentation though.

Pixar always surprises and delights me each time with the leaps and bounds that their effects and textures and just general technology takes with each feature. And Ratatouille is no exception... their ability to render fur and hair... wet, dry, messy, sleek... is amazing, I mean it's been pretty damn good in the past, but this time around it was just fantastic... but I have to say, the single most impressive "effect" or texture... I'm not quite sure what it would come under... was a piece of bread. Yeah, I know how that sounds, but this was AMAZING. You know when you tear a piece of bread and it has that light, almost transparent texture at the edges... where it's all "bubbles" with thin amounts of bread between them... they GOT it... 100% perfect. It looked like you could have reached out, grabbed it and taken a bite. Actually all the food was pretty impressive, but that one piece of bread was just the standout for me. Sad, but true.

There were also a lot of really impressive shots of Paris. From the very first shot we see of the city, through to a beautiful night time skyline from the human character, Linguini's, apartment... even down to just the small details of the courtyard at the back of the restaurant, it all looked beautiful.

But movies like this can look stunning without having a leg to stand on story-wise, however Ratatouille managed quite a decent plot. And unlike Cars, it wasn't a plot you really predicted right from the word go and were just waiting for it to happen. I'm not saying there were any major twists or turns, but it wasn't predictable either... well, except for the fact that you knew at some point that the rat had to be exposed...

And it was genuinely funny at times too... laugh out loud funny rather than just wry smile funny... and I got a tiny touch emotional towards the end (oh shut up... these movies make with the emotional manipulation). Like with a lot of movies of this nature, they sometimes put too many of the really good or funny bits into the trailers, so you end up knowing what's coming next at certain points. That's not necessarily the fault of Pixar/Disney though, since that happens with a whole bunch of movies, especially comedies.

None of the voice talent really stood out as "Oh look, Celebrity Voice Actor"... well, with the exception of Peter O'Toole as the restaurant critic, Anton Ego (even though Ma and I couldn't actually work out who the hell he was at first, which was highly frustrating)... in fact, it wasn't until I looked on IMDB that I realised that the female lead, Colette, was voiced by Janeane Garofalo. Possibly because she had the whole French accent thing going on, but still.

So all in all it was not only visually stunning, but actually a pretty good story too.

yani's rating: 3 chef's toques out of 5