First Impressions ‘Ratatouille’
I’ve been so crazy with work recently that I’ve been neglecting the blog a little bit, i’ll be back in full force soon enough but right now things are gonna be a bit quiet. I’ve still taken in a couple of previews for upcoming films and in lieu of proper reviews you’ll have to settle for some intial reaction stuff.
So once again a film that’s already been and gone in the U.S finally washes up on the lowly shores of the UK. The new Brad Bird/Pixar film ‘Ratatouille’ will finally arrive on UK screens on the 5th of September, was it worth the wait? here’s the plot synopsis:
A rat named Remy dreams of becoming a great French chef despite his family’s wishes and the obvious problem of being a rat in a decidedly rodent-phobic profession. When fate places Remy in the sewers of Paris, he finds himself ideally situated beneath a restaurant made famous by his culinary hero, Auguste Gusteau. Despite the apparent dangers of being an unlikely - and certainly unwanted - visitor in the kitchen of a fine French restaurant, Remy’s passion for cooking soon sets into motion a hilarious and exciting rat race that turns the culinary world of Paris upside down.
Remy finds himself torn between his calling and passion in life or returning forever to his previous existence as a rat. He learns the truth about friendship, family and having no choice but to be who he really is, a rat who wants to be a chef.
Really the buzz word when it comes to this film has to be ‘Brad Bird’ the man with golden touch, and the right ideas behind animated films. So I’ve seen ‘The Iron Giant’ and ‘The Incredibles’ and of course love them both. So I’d heard rumblings from the US that Ratatouille was hot stuff, but honestly I’ve been so worn down by kids CGI movies and 3 whole shrek films that I’m kind of numb to it all (I expect most parents feel the same). I hadn’t read a review fully and I’d skimmed through the trailer. So consider me neutral when I sat down in the screening room.
If I could High Five Brad Bird right now I would, the guy can tell a story on screen like very few people i’ve ever seen. I think what I was expecting (again a bi-product of WAY too many crappy cgi films, and infact crap films in general) was some comedy characters, some comedy french accents and lots of comedy set-pieces and very little else. What I got was WAYYYY beyond that.
Ratatouille is brilliant, It’s really utterly beautiful as a film. I think probably the best compliment I could give it would be to say that you could almost remove the fact that the ‘hero’ and his co-horts are rats, takeaway the animation and the film would still be as beautiful and as touching as when I saw it. The stories about following your dreams and trying to find acceptance but never falls into the tactic of being overly sappy or purpously manipulative. There’s some incredible action scenes (Remy being chased around a restaurant by angry chefs) that had me doing the weird tensing-my-body thing I do when i’m on the edge of my seat… and a couple of moments when someone must have been smoking in our theatre as my eyes started to water. Definitely not crying. Smoking.
It’s the perfect mix of humour, drama and action that every kids film should have but very few achieve. Forget Transformers, forget Die Hard 4.0, forget the floating corpse that was Pirates 3… skip them all, save your money and go and see Ratatouille when it comes out.
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