But he hasn't left this earth altogether. Remy's idol is a jolly, rotund celebrity chef named Gusteau (Brad Garrett), whose dictum is "Anyone can cook." At least that was his dictum: Gusteau, whose heart was broken over a bad review by spiteful food critic Anton Ego (a deliciously nasty Peter O'Toole), which resulted in the loss of one of his restaurant's stars, has passed on to that great kitchen in the sky. Still, he's a rat with a dream: He wants to become a chef, to be the creator of something, not merely a thief or hanger-on. Remy knows that as a rat, it's his lot in life to scrounge and to steal. Remy (his voice is that of comedian Patton Oswalt) is a French rat with a highly attuned sense of taste and smell, such that his father, Django (Brian Dennehy) and his large network of rat friends and family put him to work sniffing around for hidden rat poison. Each of us has a specific set of gifts, but recognizing them isn't enough it's what we do with them that counts.Īnd so with the Disney/Pixar "Ratatouille," Bird gives us the most distasteful setup imaginable - rats! in the kitchen! not only touching the food, but preparing it - and turns it around into something we couldn't have expected.
#RATATOUILLE MOVIE LENGTH MOVIE#
In fact, Bird's pictures - which include the gentle but assertive 1999 Cold War fable "The Iron Giant" and the 2004 superhero adventure "The Incredibles," a movie about families and the nature of democracy - honor and celebrate individuality even as they recognize that the development of potential (and not just mindless praise of the raw, unshaped material in all of us) is what's important. His colors are never garish his characters are always written, fleshed out, not just storyboarded and his ideas, while easy enough to grasp, stretch beyond the typical homilies of being true to oneself, or of asserting that everyone is special. Bird is one of the great modern animators - as well as an astonishingly gifted filmmaker, period - precisely because he doesn't set out to wow us. One of the great pleasures of Brad Bird's "Ratatouille" - just one of many in a picture that is itself about the rewards and the frustrations of seeking pleasure - is its inherent lightness, the way it seems wholly unaware that it's a grand achievement of animation, even though it is.