An advantage of being in the U.S. is watching movies as soon as they are released - and not waiting for eternity (or downloading a bad quality print). So, as soon as I was free, I made my way to the nearest theatre to watch my most anticipated movie of the year Ratatouille (yep, I am copy-pasting from google’s very helpful suggestion for my contorted spellings of the movie).
Of course, there is one thing that is better than the movie - and that is the short “Lifted” that plays before the movie starts. I kinda slept through the boink-boink sheep that played before Incredibles, but “Lifted” is a whole new world. Ever know what goes on in the minds of aliens as they try to “lift” sleeping humans into their UFOs in the dead of the night? If you dont, you have to watch Lifted for a very hilarious take on it.
On a sidenote, Brad Bird is my new hero. I have read on several animation blogs how he took charge only 18 months before and significantly re-wrote the script while personally going through every animation. I loved Incredibles and I am so in love with Ratatouille.
Back to the movie. Ratatouille obviously means a french vegetable dish, but to us french illitrates the most obvious conclusion is it has got something to do with a rat. Ratatouille (the french dish) plays a very critical role in the film, while also ending up as a name of a restaurant (in the film). We get to see Remy, the rat, develop an acute sense of culinary excellence while watching Gusteau, the celebrated french chef on TV (whose claim to fame is the book “Anyone can cook”). The most excellent scenes in the movie are when Remy tries to get his brother to understand how to sense taste and what good food means. If you have cooked for a while, you would understand exactly how that feels like.
Then there is Linguini, the pimply boy who is so painfully shy and so afraid of saying “no” and always screws things up. But, the character that takes the cake is Mr. Anton Ego - the harshest food critic of all France. Peter O’Toole excels in his voice over which is completely contrasting to what you know of him. Mr. Anton Ego looks talks and writes like a vulture but at the end - is a transformed man.
There are interesting scenes where Gusteau appears as a “figment of imagination” of Remy. And Remy asks him, “Didnt you know this?” and Gusteau (voiced by Brad Garrett of Robert Barone - Everybody Loves Raymond - fame) replies “I only know what you know, after all, I am only a figment of your imagination”. It is a kid’s movie and this kind of intelligence is never shown in any such movie. Perhaps, it is time for children’s movies to grow up!
There are hilarious moments in the movie which are not just witty dialogues but amazing physical humour. What struck me was the amazing character design that was necessary to bring all this to life. Every pose of Remy or Linguini is potent with action that voice seems almost unnecessary. It almost transported me back to the era of silent tom and jerry.
The bottom line is: Watch the movie. It makes you a child again!
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