[Review] Ratatouille

If I were writer/director Brad Bird right now, I'd be pinching myself at the fact that everything I touch turns to gold.  Granted, Iron Giant was not a box-office success thanks to horrendous promotion.  The Incredibles was an instant classic.  And with Ratatouille, Bird may have done the heretofore unthinkable: he may have made a movie just as good as The Incredibles. 

The animation in the movie is flawless.  Rats move like rats.  The hair seems real, the food seems practically smell-able and taste-able.  An early scene involving water rapids showcases the ridiculous ability of Pixar's animators and artists; after some time, it becomes difficult to imagine the water not being real even though it isn't. 

The story has all the appropriate amounts of comedy (quite a bit), love (just enough for you to care but not so much as to make things tacky), action and drama.  Remy is an incredibly lovable and endearingly flawed protagonist as he makes the audience believe in a rat that wants to surpass his lot in life and become something much more.  Certain elements of the story may come close to bringing you to tears, which is mo small feat for a cartoon of any stripe beyond Robotech. 

But Bird's greatest triumph -- aside from the monologue at the end that lambastes the critic industry -- might be the script and actors effectively overcoming the ridiculous-even-by-Pixar-movie-standards plot convention that enables Remy to pursue his dream of becoming a chef.  When you first see it, you think it's laughable...and within 5 minutes, it becomes an accepted part of what the viewer is watching.  

I almost downgraded Ratatouille to 4 ¹/₂ stars simply because it wasn't The Incredibles.  But such a rating would have been attributable to my super-hero bias instead of any concrete beef I had with Bird's latest.  The reality is that I could find no glaring flaws in this film.  Others have agreed.  For that reason, it's at 96% at Rotten Tomatoes ...and it gets 5 Obsidian Movie Reels from us.

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