Ratatouille (film)

For the French food dish after which the film is named, see Ratatouille.

For the video game based on the film, see Ratatouille (video game).

Ratatouille
Directed by	Brad Bird Jan Pinkava (Credited as co-director)
Written by	Brad Bird Story: Jan Pinkava Jim Capobianco Brad Bird Emily Cook Kathy Greenberg
Produced by	Brad Lewis
Starring	Patton Oswalt Lou Romano Peter Sohn Brad Garrett Janeane Garofalo Ian Holm Brian Dennehy
Edited by	Darren T. Holmes
Music by	Michael Giacchino
Distributed by	Pixar
Release dates	June 29, 2007 August 30, 2007 October 5, 2007
Running time	111 min
Language	English
Budget	US$100 million

Ratatouille is the eighth animated feature film produced by Pixar. It tells the story of Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt), a rat living in Paris who wants to be a chef. The film is directed by Brad Bird, who took over around the time Jan Pinkava left Pixar. It is scheduled for release on June 29, 2007 in the United States.

Cast

• Patton Oswalt as Remy, a rat who wants to be a chef.
• Lou Romano as Linguini, garbage boy and prep cook, who befriends Rémy.
• Janeane Garofalo as Colette, meat and poultry chef.
• Ian Holm as Skinner, head chef.
• Peter Sohn as Emile, Remy's younger brother who doesn't care what's edible or not.
• Brian Dennehy as Django, Remy's father.
• Brad Garrett as Auguste Gusteau, founder of Gusteau's.
• Peter O'Toole as Anton Ego, food critic.
• John Ratzenberger as Mustafa, head waiter.
• Jake Steinfeld as Git, lab rat.
• Will Arnett as Horst, sous-chef.
• Julius Callahan as Lalo / Francois Dupuis, fish chef / businessman.
• James Remar as Larousse, salad and appetizer chef.
• Teddy Newton as Talon LaBarthe, Skinner's lawyer.
• Tony Fucile as Pompidou / Health Inspector, pastry chef / health inspector.
• Brad Bird as Ambrister Minion, Anton Ego's assistant.

Plot

Remy lives in a French country house with his pack, led by his father Django. Unlike his kin, Remy is a foodie. His innate ability to smell ingredients in food is unappreciated by the pack, who use him as poison sniffer. Remy has been sneaking alone into the kitchen, reading from the cookbook of his hero: the Parisian chef Auguste Gusteau (who had died after a brutal review by food critic Anton Ego).

An attempt to burgle spices from the kitchen with his brother Emile is short-lived when its occupant, an old woman named Mabel, wakes and discovers the rat pack. The rats escape, but Remy is separated from his family. Lonely, Remy imagines talking with Gusteau, who guides and comforts him. Remy finds Gusteau's restaurant, which has fallen on hard times since Gusteau's death. It has been taken over by Gusteau's sous-chef, Skinner, who has sold out Gusteau's image to sell microwavable food products.

Gusteau's has hired a new garbage boy, Linguini, for whom Skinner has no respect. Unknown to both Skinner and the boy is the fact that Linguini is Gusteau's son. Remy watches in horror as Linguini attempts to fix a soup he spilled by filling it with random ingredients. He enters the kitchen and fixes the soup properly. Linguini sees Remy, but is then scolded by Skinner, who realizes, not only that Linguini had been cooking, but that the soup had been given to a food critic, Solene LeClaire. To Skinner's surprise, she finds it delicious. Another chef, Colette, convinces Skinner not to fire Linguini, and Skinner agrees as long as Linguini can recreate "his" soup.

The rest of the cooking staff then discover Remy and Skinner orders Linguini to take him away and kill him, lest people discover that the kitchen has rats. Linguini discovers that Remy can understand him, and they agree to work together secretly, so that Linguini can keep his job and Remy can cook.

The next day, Skinner sets Linguini to work. Remy discovers he can control Linguini like a marionette by pulling hairs under his hat. After some practice at Linguini's small apartment, Remy uses Linguini to remake the soup, and Linguini is fully promoted to chef. Later, Skinner discovers Linguini's heritage. He fears that if Linguini finds out, the restaurant will go to him (as specified in Gusteau's will) instead of Skinner.

While trying to save face after an embarrassing incident, Linguini nearly tells Colette about Remy, but instead kisses her. They fall in love.

One night, Remy's brother appears to him, and takes him down to the new home of his pack. Remy fights with Django over his desire to cook, then he starts scrounging food from the restaurant kitchen for Emile and an ever-growing number of friends. He discovers documents concerning Linguini and his place in Gusteau's will, and, eluding Skinner, gives the documents to Linguini, who fires Skinner. Linguini becomes a rising star in the culinary world. Anton Ego is surprised that Gusteau's has recovered from his review. Skinner becomes suspicious of Linguini's success, and the occasional glimpse of Remy convinces him that he is responsible.

Linguini and Remy have a temporary falling-out, due to Linguini's inability to credit Remy for his success and the revelation that Remy had been stealing food. Skinner captures Remy, wanting him to create a line of microwavable products, lest Remy gets killed. With the help of his pack, Remy escapes and heads back to the restaurant. Linguini, who was unable to handle the kitchen, protects Remy from the alarmed staff and explains the entire ruse. All the chefs walk out except for Colette, but with Remy's help, the rats take over the job. Ego reviews the restaurant that night, and Remy serves him a dish of ratatouille, which reminds Ego of his childhood and warms his heart. Ego wishes to meet the chef, and eventually has the story explained to him and witnesses the cooking rats. Surprisingly, he writes a positive review.

Unfortunately, the rat-filled kitchen was witnessed by both Skinner and a health inspector and Gusteau's is shut down forever (and Ego loses his credibility and job). Linguini, Colette, and Remy open a new restaurant called "Le Ratatouille." Ego regularly visits the restaurant, and Remy's pack lives in the restaurant's ceiling, eating fine food.

Production

"It is a wonderful story about following your passions when all the world is against you. A rat to a kitchen is death; a kitchen to a rat is death."

— Producer John Lasseter on the film's theme

Jan Pinkava came up with the concept and was originally directing Ratatouille, but Brad Bird replaced him in 2005, although Pinkava still receives a co-director credit on the film. Bird was attracted to the film because of the outlandishness of the concept and the conflict that drove it: that kitchens feared rats, yet a rat wanted to work in one. Bird was also delighted that the film was a highly physical comedy, with the character of Linguini providing endless fun for the animators. Bird altered the script to give Colette a larger role to deepen the human part of the story, and decided to change the initial models of the rats which he considered too human-looking. He brought a tank of rats for the animators to study for more than a year, in order to analyze the animals' movement of their noses, ears, paws and their tails as they ran. When Bird heard Patton Oswalt talking about Black Angus steakhouse commercials, he knew he had the right tone of voice for a foodie like Remy. The rest of the cast spent time making their French accents authentic yet understandable: John Ratzenberger noted he often segued into an Italian accent.

A challenge for the filmmakers was creating a sense of taste on film. Gourmet cooks, including Sets and Layout Dept Manager Michael Warch, a chef prior to working at Pixar, were consulted to help with how food and kitchens would be organized, and they taught the animators how to cook. The same sub-surface light scattering technique that was used on skin in The Incredibles was used on fruits and vegetables, while new programs gave an organic texture and movement to the food. Completing the illusion was music, dialogue and abstract imagery. Although Ratatouille is intended to be romantic, lush vision of Paris, giving it identity from previous Pixar films, the crew spent a week in the city to properly understand its environment, taking a motorcycle tour and eating at several top restaurants. There are also many water-based sequences in the film, one of which is set in the sewers and ten times more complex than the blue whale scene in Finding Nemo. One scene has Linguini wet after jumping into the Seine to fetch Remy, and a Pixar employee (ShadePaint Dept Coordinator Kesten Migdal) jumped into a swimming pool to observe the look of wet clothing.

Marketing

The first trailer for Ratatouille debuted with the theatrical release of its immediate predecessor, Cars. A second trailer was released on March 23 2007. The film's trailers say that the film's title is pronounced "rat-a-too-ee". This is a non-standard phonetic notation which has the effect of emphasizing the "rat" since the word is more usually represented as "ra-ta-touille" or "ra-ta-tou-ille". The same applies for the German title where the phonetic notation is "ratte-tuu-ii" (Note: "Ratte" means rat in German.) Brad Bird said "Ratatouille" was a difficult word to pronounce, but there was no better title so they tried to turn it into a marketing strength.

A tour, The Ratatouille Big Cheese Tour, began on May 11 2007, with a sneak peek at the film and cooking demonstrations.

Release

The Academy Award nominated short film Lifted and the teaser trailer for Pixar's next film WALL-E precede Ratatouille in theaters.

There were 843 preview screenings across the United States on June 16 2007.

Reaction

Ratatouille has opened to overwhelmingly positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes it is 9/10 'fresh.' On Metacritic, it has a 94/100. Both of these ratios are improvements to last year's Cars, which also received positive reviews, though less positive than Pixar's previous films.

External links

• Official site
• Ratatouille at IMDb
• Ratatouille at Rotten Tomatoes
• Ratatouille profile
• American Ratatouille Theatrical Trailer
• Japanese Ratatouille Theatrical Trailer
• Behind-The-Scenes clip of Ratatouille
• Ratatouille Fan Site
• Ratatouille Review at Hollywood Snitch