I think this may be a big part of it. It was funny to see the Monsters Inc characters in the university setting and there was some good gags that I appreciated while watching it, but there really wasn’t an emotional core to the story equivalent to Mike and Sully trying to save Boo. Without that, you get to the end of the story and you just remember the moderately amusing college hijinks that have been done in other movies.
Pixar is usually really good at getting that emotional core in a movie. In Toy Story, you have the love between Andy and his toys. I’d argue that their weaker efforts are the ones that lack this, namely this movie and the Cars franchise.
You DARE rate Ratatouille anything other than God-like? You and me need to have some words. Step outside please.
I thought Ratatouille had one glaring problem, namely… it just wasn’t very entertaining. Where were the laughs? It had a lot of heart, gorgeous visuals, and interesting characters. But it was also frustratingly preachy and just not full of fun and life the way the best Pixar movies are. My two cents…
This was distinctly second-tier Pixar as were the last two films, though I liked Cars 2 more than I expected to. So three in a row of good but not great Pixars which is a first. The other films I consider second-tier are Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc and Cars but none of them were followed the other. Pixar had an incredible run with Ratatouille, Wall E, Up and Toy Story 3 and I wonder if they will ever reach those heights again. I suppose all good things have to come to an end sometime. As for this one I did like that they avoided the usual triumph of the underdogs ending while still keeping it upbeat.
This. The movie wasn’t bad by any means, but to me, it felt like a lot of half-baked concepts to me kind of hastily thrown together, which wouldn’t surprise me given its rocky development
I was there last Christmas and much to my surprise it turned out to be one of my favorite attractions in the park. Definitely worth a look.