With good intention, comes good outcome. This dishy, delightful new serving from Pixar Animations, with unbeatable efforts from THE INCREDIBLES writer/director Brad Bird, revives the recent lowbrow ingredients of animated films that plagues cinema nowadays, and offered us a winning tale of this rat named Remy who chased his dreams despite being chased by thrown knives and stomping feet. RATATOUILLE is as rich as your sumptuous dinner; as tingly as your appetizer, as savoury as your main course, and definitely delectable as your afters of trifles. And when it’s done, it’s worth saying “bon appétit!” after all.


Nothing comes indeed better than an animation with a heart. After the age of TOY STORY, MONSTERS INC, FINDING NEMO and THE INCREDIBLES – we knew Pixar’s era has come, and that the frolics and flouncing of Walt Disney 2D fairy tales are done. Stunning, inventive, motion-capture animation histrionics had changed the monotony, and tales were told to inspire children, and surprisingly, the adults as well. Here in RATATIOUILLE, the underdog formula is applied, and in this case – an under-rat – who grows up in a distant French town with a peculiarly talented nose and taste amid the population of rats who thrives on garbage. He found it difficult to follow his dreams, of course, he’s a rat (points to racial issues and discrimination), but was continually inspired by the idyllic Parisian chef Gusteau that “anyone can cook”. In cooking and food, Paris was the place to be and he discovers he needs a human in order to perform in his top skill. On the other side of the story, Linguini, a gormless chef-wannabe enters the restaurant with no talent at all and nearly destroyed the shop’s reputation by screwing up a soup. In a funny sequence, Remy comes in rescue to restore the soup and made it even much better that the whole public fell in love with it.This is a fun film to watch, the spectacle never bores. The animation is a speculating wonder and breathtaking bedazzlement. The action sequences were wonderfully orchestrated, and the rats seemed more like rats, and the likes of Cinderella-ish rats were already part of history. Every movement of hair, every leap of Remy in the wind, and every platter served, deserved some worthy Oscar attention in the Animated Film category.


Most of all, the visual wouldn’t work if the voice performances are dull. Kudos to the talented voice cast for lending a creative dynamo of voices. Patton Oswalt as the rat Remy is brilliant, so with Jeneane Garofalo as the lady chef Colette, whose voice was almost unrecognisable beneath the thick French-accented English. Ian Holm as the always-angry Skinner was equally talented. But it’s Peter O’Toole’s Anton Ego that gives the film a surprising impact; a portrait of hard-knocking food critic, whose reviews could threaten the lives of chefs and the existence of restaurants, steeled by age and ironed by complexity, but softened by one mere dish that transports him back to his childhood days when best dishes are served on the table by care and love.


Maybe this was why RATAOUILLE made sense. It’s almost flawless in its storytelling (how much more for its technical aspects), touching the humour side, albeit giving us a rather ridiculous story of a rat wanting to be a chef and cooking up one of the most delicious dish in Paris (however who says ‘not ridiculous’ to the story of a father clownfish looking for his lost son in the ocean, or monsters appearing in closets scaring children, or toys moving about behind people’s backs?). It’s in the core of this tale that made this film unexpectedly moving with characters that flows with three-dimensionality. Maybe it’s the story of a small entity daring to dream in a much bigger and more intimidating world; being criticised, discriminated, yanked on the hook, but still persevered to do something he ever dreamed of doing.


What matters most is that this is what we call animation with depth. Sophistication. Beauty. RATATOUILLE may not be as great as FINDING NEMO, but it’s surely one of Pixar’s greats and one of this year’s best films.


“Anyone can cook, but the only the fearless can become great.”




RATING: A