>>REVIEW
Ratatouille
STARRING THE VOICES OF: Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Ian Holm, Janeane Garofalo DIRECTED BY: Brad Bird Opens Friday June 29, Check Listings
Ratatouille: a traditional French stewed vegetable dish made up of tomatoes, onions, garlic, zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, herbs de Provence and sometimes basil. That sure sounds … well … not very exciting at all. Oh wait, then it’s the perfect title for Disney/Pixar’s latest animated film.
This is the story of a rat named Remy who wants to be more than just a rat and a boy named Linguini who wants to be more than just a boy. Advised by an Obi-wan-like apparition, Remy ends up in the kitchen of one of Paris’s premier restaurants, where Linguini is the garbage boy. Once their paths cross, they give each other the opportunity to be more than their stations in life have dictated — they get the chance to be the greatest chef in Paris. There’s a lot to be said for filling a story full of life lessons, but there’s also something to be said for making one that’s going to keep the kids entertained for 110 minutes.
For the adults in the crowd, the great thing is that Ratatouille is a technically amazing visual feast, from the cityscape of Paris down to the slicing and dicing of veggies, and its action sequences, including a mad kitchen scramble and a scooter chase through the streets, are simply astounding. Unfortunately, the young ones in the audience won’t be as impressed by the film’s look. They’ll more likely ask, "are they back in the kitchen again?" which ends up being the movie’s biggest problem. It just doesn’t have that certain something, that "zing" that makes kids want to come back for seconds and thirds.
Director Brad Bird, who three years ago brought audiences The Incredibles, fails to do for the culinary world what he did for that of the superhero, which was to make a fun adventure full of interesting characters and wildly entertaining situations. If you want to see the inner workings of a kitchen, the struggles of up-and-coming chefs and the tirades of one power-hungry chef, then you might as well save the trip to the theatre and just watch Hell’s Kitchen on TV. |
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