The latest animated effort from Pixar Animation Studios and Incredibles writer-director Brad Bird is a tasty treat about a Paris gourmet restaurant that gets a boost when the garbage boy morphs into its innovative new chef. Unbeknownst to its clientele, the mastermind behind the scrumptious new dishes is a rat called Rémy (Patton Oswalt).
Rémy must contend on the one hand with his rodent brethren who are content to scarf up the filthy scraps left behind by the humans, and on the other by the humans whom he seeks to emulate, but who regard him as vermin. Rémy takes as his inspiration the cookbook by the late great chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett) and, through a happy accident, winds up in the former kitchen of the great man himself. The inspired sequence by which the rat becomes the cook is too clever to describe. The only thing that might have improved it is UB40’s reggae classic “Rat in Mi Kitchen.” The bits in which Gusteau leaps off the page to have imaginary conversations with Rémy are also delicious.
Gusteau’s motto is “anyone can cook,” while Rémy reminds us that “not everyone should.” In this way, the movie combines the French egalitarian ideal with the American meritocratic one. Perhaps this explains why the rats and the garbage boy speak with American accents while the other humans have French ones. In any case, Bird suffuses the movie with a love of fine food that will appeal to the adult Food Channel crowd as well as kids, who could actually learn a little about how a restaurant works. Among the supporting characters, feisty cook Colette (Janeane Garofalo) and fulminating food critic Ego (Peter O’Toole) stand out, but almost all of the ingredients blend well here.
IMDB link
reviewed 7/8/07
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