Sunday, July 01, 2007

why ratatouille rocked (minor spoilers)

i've never been into movie reviews (though i watch a lot of films nowadays), but for pixar i must gush.

so you know how in the witches the protagonist gets changed into a mouse halfway through the book, and suddenly everything changes -- for him, because he now has to navigate being a creature in a human's world, and for us because we have to readjust our expectations of what's going to happen next? well, ratatouille does that trick multiple times, elegantly walking the very fine tightrope that makers of cartoons always dread, the one where animals/inanimate objects have to interact and coexist with human beings. there's remy in the rat's world, and remy in the human's world, and yet the entire piece feels natural and complete seamless (nerdy exercise: when the dvd comes out find all the splice points. i warrant there are dozens more than you noticed on first watching. make it a drinking game!). on top of that, all this is stirred in to a rather complex plot (for an animated feature), with a sly and amusing script. it didn't have as much heart as nemo, and it wasn't quite as fresh to me as cars, but i think that of all the pixar films so far, it may well the most significant in moving the genre forward.

i hardly need to praise everything else, but i have to express gladness that janeane garofalo is continuing to do amazing things post-felicity, and that sir ian holm, as always, deserves encomiums that the english language cannot provide. and pixar, i reaffirm my willingness to follow you wherever you may lead. wall-e: summer 2008!

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