jeriendhal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
jeriendhal) wrote2007-11-19 09:11 am
jeriendhal) wrote2007-11-19 09:11 am
Entry tags:
Review: Ratatouille
Summary: Born with a better than average nose, Remy the rat is torn between sticking with his clan and acting as poison inspector or attempting to fufill his dream of being a great French chef with the help of a hapless human named Linguini.
should not have interested me.
Then I realized it was Pixar & Brad Bird making it, so I decided to go with the flow.
It goes without saying that this is a beautiful film. The art direction is top notch and the depiction of Paris and the kitchen of Gustav's is damned near close to photoreal. The plot is pretty fun and contains some nice moments. In particular, when the Hair-By-Snape food critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole), is overcome by a simple "peasant dish" of ratatouille and is instantly transported back to the boyhood kitchen of his mother, it's almost worth crying for. O'Toole's reading of Ego's restaurant review the next morning has to be one of the best monologues I've ever heard and it's a sharp distillation of the difference between critics who only see flaws and those who dare to create.
That said, the film does have a few flaws itself (says the critic). Coming in at just under two hours, it's overlong by about twenty minutes. It's hard to imagine a theater full of youngling's sitting quietly through it, especially with the short "Lifted" (a marvelous piece of physical comedy involving an alien abduction) in front of it. There's also bit too much narration by Remy, though it's a necessity given the narrative choice of him not being able to directly communicate with Linguini (they operate via Linguini asking questions and Remy answering with nods and shrugs.) and there's a bit of physical comedy during Remy's "Training sequence" in Linuini's apartment that goes on for ahair too long. But overall it's a terrific film that will make you salivate for something more than movie popcorn and nachos.
should not have interested me.
Then I realized it was Pixar & Brad Bird making it, so I decided to go with the flow.
It goes without saying that this is a beautiful film. The art direction is top notch and the depiction of Paris and the kitchen of Gustav's is damned near close to photoreal. The plot is pretty fun and contains some nice moments. In particular, when the Hair-By-Snape food critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole), is overcome by a simple "peasant dish" of ratatouille and is instantly transported back to the boyhood kitchen of his mother, it's almost worth crying for. O'Toole's reading of Ego's restaurant review the next morning has to be one of the best monologues I've ever heard and it's a sharp distillation of the difference between critics who only see flaws and those who dare to create.
That said, the film does have a few flaws itself (says the critic). Coming in at just under two hours, it's overlong by about twenty minutes. It's hard to imagine a theater full of youngling's sitting quietly through it, especially with the short "Lifted" (a marvelous piece of physical comedy involving an alien abduction) in front of it. There's also bit too much narration by Remy, though it's a necessity given the narrative choice of him not being able to directly communicate with Linguini (they operate via Linguini asking questions and Remy answering with nods and shrugs.) and there's a bit of physical comedy during Remy's "Training sequence" in Linuini's apartment that goes on for ahair too long. But overall it's a terrific film that will make you salivate for something more than movie popcorn and nachos.