This evening, I went to see the latest offering from Pixar, Ratatouille. After the studio stumbled a bit with Cars, in my estimation, I tried to lower my expectations a bit with this movie. Then, after all the critical feedback started coming in so overwhelmingly positive, I tried to adjust my expectations downward again. Nothing could live up to that much hype, could it?Well, Ratatouille is not a perfect film. It's a bit slow at some points in the middle. But aside from that, it's really quite excellent. Brad Bird, director of The Incredibles, is back in charge of this film, and comparing this to Cars is like night and day.
The plotting is much more clever. The final act in particular is really well done, presenting the ultimate message of the tale in a way that's not too heavy-handed, while simultaneously turning away from several chances to give a phony, sappy, "everyone comes to understand" conclusion you expect kids' movies to have.
The characters are much more relatable. This is a three-tiered triumph. In begins with the writing, which is sharp and clear.
It continues with the vocal performances, which are outstanding -- and full of unexpected, but brilliant, casting decisions. I wouldn't have recognized Janeane Garofalo if I hadn't seen her name in the credits. Patton Oswalt is a refreshingly "not so famous" (unless you watch lots of Comedy Central Friar's Club Roasts) choice for the lead role, that is traditionally filled by some big Hollywood name simply acting like him- or herself. Peter O'Toole practically steals the movie.
The third piece of the strong characterizations is the brilliant animation. This is Pixar's best yet in this area. By a mile. And considering what they've done before, that's saying a lot. Particularly impressive is that the rats only speak when the film takes on their perspective; they are silent when things are seen from the human point of view. This means that a large piece of the performance is total pantomime. Not since The Little Mermaid can I think of an American animated film in which a major character has had to convey so much without dialogue. But this film far surpasses the work there.
Other pieces of the puzzle are excellent as well. The music score from Michael Giacchino is one of his best. The jokes are truly funny. Even the short film that runs before Ratatouille is outstanding.
As I mentioned earlier, the only down side in my mind is that there are a few periods in the film where the momentum lags just a bit -- moments where I caught myself thinking, "well, maybe this isn't going to be as great as I've been thinking." But then, within a few minutes, the movie would pull right back out of the small slump with another great scene.
I give it an A-.
2 comments:
really good "Disney" movie. I dare you not to get all teary-eyed during the monologue at the end. Disney has a pretty good handle on the big mallet they can smack you on the head and say "cry! it's emotional!" and you get hit several times during this movie.
I'm glad this movie didn't get Disney's typical MEGA-hype. because a big point of the movie was getting great results out of unexpected things. I just wonder if they did that on purpose or if it's coincidence...
the mole
I almost feel like the previews that ran before Ratatouille were there to make the movie look even better.
This movie did a lot right. The animation was gorgeous, the cinematography and direction superb, and the voice acting wonderful. You've made pretty much all the points that I would have about them and the only thing I have to add is that you can definitely see Brad Bird's touch in the way that camera shotss, angles and cuts were used in a way that live movies do and this served to enhance the film by adding emotion and meaning to scenes.
The storytelling was only pretty good and that's why I can't quite put this on the level of Pixar's top tier (Toy Stories, Finding Nemo, Incredibles). That said, I still think it's better than any film the only other major animation studio (PDI Dreamworks) has done. That includes Shrek.
To answer the mole, the biggest reason that this movie didn't get the typical Disney hype is that it wasn't even supposed to be a Disney movie. This was the film that Pixar put into production after they thought they had worked on their last film under Disney and were preparing to shop themselves around to other studios. This film was going to show that they could make a good movie without being associated with Disney (the use of a rat as a protagonist was probably not unintentional). Unfortunately, the original director of the movie couldn't quite get the story to gel causing its delay (and was the reason Brad Bird was brought in). In that time, Eisner left Disney which was Pixar's (mainly Steve Jobs' from my understanding) big reason for not wanting to work with them so Pixar then gladly sold themselves to Disney and Disney was now left with trying to promote a film they knew little about and hadn't been with from the beginning. What they did in their short time with the film was poor beyond that.
It also isn't really fair to call this a Disney movie. Disney distributed it, but Pixar's animation studio, even back in the original agreement with Disney, was separate from Disney's animation studio and there really wasn't any overlap in writers, directors, or animators (this is made more apparent when comparing it to Disney animations recent work - the ugly and trite Meet The Robinsons). While the film obviously pays homage to the traditional Disney classic animated features (especially in its darker tone), the credit for what the movie did should go to Pixar. Sorry, I also get annoyed when people attribute video games to the publisher instead of the developer.
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