Ratatouille 2007

     Remy dreams of becoming a great French chef in spite of his family’s doubts and his biggest drawback is that he is a rat.  He has an exceptional nose and he appreciates the finer foods in life.  He is suddenly swept away by the sewers of Paris and finds himself under a restaurant formerly owned by his culinary hero, Auguste Gusteau.  At first, Remy doesn’t think he has a chance to work at this respected establishment?  He helps Linguini, the newly hired garbage boy correct the seasonings in the soup du jour (of the day) and he’s on his way to a career.  There are many mishaps and missteps along his path. 

     I have seen this before but I had forgotten how funny it really is.  Remy controls the garbage boy in cooking by pulling the boy’s hair underneath his chef hat.  The current chef thinks he keeps seeing a rat in the kitchen but how can that be?  There are remarks about the French, haute cuisine, food critics, etc.  Linguini is an orphan but he is a young adult and not a child.  There is some moderate peril involving rats and weapon wielding humans!!  5* (I really liked this movie)
 
111 min, Pixar Animation directed and written by Brad Bird, Jan Pinkava, with the voices of Brad Garrett, Lou Romano, Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Brian Dennehy, Peter Sohn, Peter O’Toole, Janeane Garofalo, Will Arnett, Julius Callahan, James Remar, John Ratzenberger, Teddy Newton,Tony Fucile.

Note:  Blockbuster 4*, Imdb 8.0 out of 10, 96% critic 87% audience on Rotten Tomatoes, Roger Ebert 4*, Common Sense Media Sandie Angulo Chen, age 6+, 4* out of 5*, 1* educational. 3* positive, 3* role models, 3* violence & scariness, 1* sexy stuff, 1* language, 1* drinking, drugs, smoking, metacritic 96 out of 100 with 37 critics (37 positive) 8.6 out of 10 with 1738 ratings (1574 positive, 105 mixed, 59 negative), The Guardian 5* Xan Brooks, cbn.com 4* out of 5*, Amazon 4.8* out of 5* with 5,443 ratings. 

Special Note:  Filmed at Pixar Animation Studios; Walt Disney Animation Studios, California; Paris, France; Chicago, Illinois.  Pet rats were kept at the studio in the hallway for more than a year so that the animators could study the movement of their fur, noses, ears, paws and tails!!  To find out how to animate the scene with the Head Chef wet, a person was dressed in a chef suit and put into a swimming pool.  The animators needed to see which parts of the suit stuck to his body and the parts you could see through.  In nearly every Pixar movie, the trademark Pizza Planet truck from the Toy Story franchise is shown.  It is about one hour and fourteen minutes into the film.  This time it appears on the bridge over the Seine in the scene where Skinner chases Remy.  Marketing tie-ins were problematic for this movie because no food product company wanted to be associated with a rat!!  This movie was filmed in France and it broke the record for the biggest debut for an animated movie in France.