Nor should it win any academy awards beyond the cutest movie or whatever, which it is not either. So yeah, I did not LOVE it. It was better than Pixar’s thinly veiled commercial for children, ‘Cars’, but it was nowhere near ‘The Incredibles’, ‘Toy Story’ or even ‘Finding Nemo’. It was OK.
First, watching rats cook, and I get the silliness of the situation, is just too much for me to digest. Second, seeing a swarm of rats cook, in a kitchen, even when steamed clean is just repulsive. I do not like rats. Poetic, yes; for my consumption, no. The plot falls into that great divide between parent and child humor, totally missing the sweet spot. Christopher Plummer elevates the movie from the just plain as the voice of a truly vicious restaurant critic, the only real engaging character in this movie other than the evil chef. The sequence of this critic tasting the rat-orchestrated ratatouille, whose taste transports him back to his childhood, is magical. Sadly, it is one of the few bright spots in this otherwise very plain vanilla Disney/Dreamworks fare.
Steve Jobs deserves, demands, more. B-
