Ratatouille Serves Up a Deliciously Good Time
By Orson Scott Card

The promos for Ratatouille looked funny and cute, and it was from Pixar, which has a record of making even dumb film ideas into wonderful movies. For instance, The Incredibles actually did a better job of the multiple-superhero movie than the supposedly much-more-serious League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Fantastic Four.

But at the same time ... really, folks, a rat that cooks haute cuisine in a French restaurant? Comedy only works if you care. How are they going to make me care about a rat that for some absurd reason has a yen to be a chef?

Here’s the miracle: It not only works, it works brilliantly. It’s funny all the way through — I joined the whole audience in laughing aloud at bit after bit. But it’s also delightfully emotional. I actually found myself caring, about the rat and even more about the charmingly inept would-be chef named Linguini.

The animation is extraordinarily expressive — while there are famous actors playing some parts, nobody was cast for star power. Instead, they were cast because they were exactly right for the part.

Janeane Garofalo, for instance, is marvelous as the hard-as-nails female chef who is ordered to take Linguini under her wing and train him. Ian Holm is great as Skinner, and Peter O’Toole absolutely rocks as the ice-hearted food critic Anton Ego.

The movie not only tells a funny, heartwarming story that makes you cheer at the sight of a kitchen full of rats, it also manages to be smart about the relationship between critics and artists of any kind.

At the end of the movie, you don’t really believe in Chef Gusteau’s slogan that “anybody can cook.” But you do gain a much greater appreciation for those who do it well.

This article first appeared in The Rhinoceros Times of Greensboro, North Carolina, and is used here by permission.