Director: Brad Bird
Starring: Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Janeane Garofalo, Ian Holm, Peter O'Toole
And now, slightly better than Brad Bird's first effort was Ratatouille.
Before we go further, what's the most important aspect of making a film? Well, good writing, first of all. After that, it's editing, cinematography, and musical score, in that order. Ratatouille beats The Incredibles because the writing was just that much better.
I admit I had some serious doubts about this one when I first saw the promotional display for it in the theatre, Spring 2007. Rats don't make endearing characters, there's zero merchandising potential, and they even had to spell the name of the film phonetically on the poster, for God's sake. However, I was proven very wrong as this one made $623,707,397 at the box office.
I like this one because obviously, they were taking big risks and most of them pay off. It's basically a discrimination tale, told in a highly original format. The Linguini character is a bit bland and started to get on my nerves halfway through, but he redeems himself in the end. He's isn't nearly as bad as Mater. I think most of the dislike comes from the fact that he is the only human character without even a trace of a French accent, so that makes him even more of an outcast. Also, Michael Giacchino's musical score is one of the best around. And, I personally believe the quote at the end that "The average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so" was a direct shot at the (relatively) bad reviews that Cars received.
Ratatouille won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. It was nominated for Best Music, Original Score, Best Achievement in Sound, Best Achievement in Sound Editing and Best Writing, Original Screenplay. It all but swept the Annies, winning 9, only losing in the Best Animated Effects category to Surf's Up.
I will leave you with what is probably my favourite clip from a Pixar film:
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