Ratatouille

There came a moment in Ratatouille when the audience audibly gasped at the image of rats busily engaged in preparing food in the kitchen of a Parisian restaurant. This moment signifies the success of the film—it compels you to believe in the rats. Ratatouille has much in common with other animated films from Pixar and Disney--talking animals, caricaturish humans, computer animation. What makes this film work so well, what pushes it well above the level of most other animated films, is how well all the basic elements interact and cohere. The film has an interesting and engaging story, a varied and distinctive array of characters who seem real and about whom we care (including the chef rat Remy), beautiful animation that does not call too much attention to itself, and a fine soundtrack. It combines a romance between two cooks in the restaurant kitchen with the story of the rat Remy's ambition to become a great chef. A key element is the fact that Remy is the most intelligent and engaging character in the film. The great antagonist of the story is the head cook Skinner, an undersized but tyrannical taskmaster who runs the kitchen like a boot camp, who is incompetent and also responsible for the once-great restaurant's decline. My favorite character was the restaurant critic Anton Ego, voiced by Peter O'Toole. The film boasts a multiplicity of plots: Remy's desire to cook, the romance between Linguini and Colette, Skinner's jealousy of Linguini's inexplicable ability to cook wonderful dishes (Remy does the cooking for him), the ghost of the deceased master chef Auguste Gusteau, and so on. This is a delightful and charming film.