Ratatouille - Review

Review
I sat down to watch Ratatouille with similar scepticism over its ability to entertain me fully as the ghoulish-looking Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole), a food critic, does of Gusteau’s (Brad Garrett), a famous chefs, belief: Anyone can cook.

Like the very Mr Burns-looking Anton Ego, I was pleasantly proved wrong. Not that I thought it was going to be terrible, rather that I question whether it would be my cup of tea.

Visually, it is brilliant. No one does it better than Pixar. There’s a perfect blend of realism and cartoon-like emotion similar to all of their films (most notably Toy Story). Paris is captured perfectly, from some beautiful overview shots of Eiffel Tower and the city, to the detailed and beautifully rendered canals.

The score deserves huge credit, seldom does a film so beautiful make you stop and take note of the music – never is music an afterthought or stop gap – and enhance the scene. Many times the music takes centre stage, in particular scenes involving Remy cooking, which play out more like a dance sequence than a scene with music in the background.

Voice acting is top notch too, no huge names here (excluding Peter O’Toole) but some good actors here provide excellent support to the story and its characters.

One or two niggles, nothing major, but the plot is rather predictable and there’s a glaringly obvious Disney metaphor intertwined in there. And it, for some reason, really bothered me that with all the rats-a-cooking there was never any complaints of stray hair. But now I’m really nitpicking.

Verdict
A solid Pixar/Disney collaboration, that just so happens to be an amazing movie too. Look hard enough and the plot isn’t the strongest but visuals, score and voice-acting more than but those niggles to rest. Fun for all, even those that don’t usually like films of this taste.

4.5/5