Ratatouille

Cafe Society
121

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
I guess it was kind of a long movie already, but it would have been nice if they could have touched on some of this rather than just have “health inspector ex machina” swoop down to close Gusteau’s like the big foot in the Monty Python cartoons.
[/QUOTE]

Or put another way, “Ending every sketch by having the fuzz show up!” :smiley:

(The fuzz being, in this case, the health inspector)

Something else that hasn’t been mentioned is that Linguini accidentally discovered that he made a pretty good waiter.

122

[QUOTE=DesertDog]
Aw, lighten up, mobo. Like Archie Bunker’s racial prejudices, the Gusteau stereotypes were hardly seen in a positive light. They were the result of Skinner trying to milk the dead chef’s name and reputation for a line of microwave products – I hesitate to call them foods.
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I wasn’t offended by them- I thought they were funny. I was just making a point about what races and nationalities are OK to make fun of and what ones aren’t in today’s society. I understood that the Gusteau stereotypes were parodies of the cheap frozen foods and other products which are sold today and having the mascot dress up in various costumes- such as Paul Newman in a Roman headdress or a Russian cossack hat, etc.- and the person who would be most offended by them would be Gusteau himself. I actually thought it was very funny. I was just pointing out that dressing up as a Chinese person for the purposes of selling food is considered okay, but making fun of a Chinese accent, no matter what the case, is considered offensive. The idea of dogs being offended by a man in a dog suit speaking like Scooby-Doo was meant to be a joke on my part, but I guess it didn’t go through as such.

123

It was hard to tell, but it looked like the (laboratory?) tag on the muscular rat’s ear might have had the serial number A113, an inside joke referring to a CalArts classroom that is used by both John Lasseter and Brad Bird. And I may have missed it, but it seems that this might be the first Pixar movie without a voice by “good luck charm” John Ratzenberger. Maybe after the joke in Cars they thought it was too obvious by now.

124

[QUOTE=mobo85]
And I may have missed it, but it seems that this might be the first Pixar movie without a voice by “good luck charm” John Ratzenberger. Maybe after the joke in Cars they thought it was too obvious by now.
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According to IMDB, Ratzenberger has a character named “Mustafa.” I’ll be damned to remember who that is, or if it even made the final cut.

ETA: Apparantly Mustafa was the waiter. IMDB Quotes shows the following exchange:
*Mustafa: Someone has asked me what is new!
Horst: What did you tell them?
Mustafa: I told them I would ask!
Skinner: What are you blathering about?
Mustafa: People are asking what is new!
Skinner: What did you tell them?
Mustafa: I told them I would ask! *

125

Ah, that explains it. I think the waiter, like most characters, had a thick French accent, which must have disgused the familiar Ratzenberger voice.

126

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
:confused: Well, that was a weird edit. Let me try that again… Anyway:

Well, it wasn’t actually in the movie, but I like your version. I disagree that being true to yourself necessarily includes public credit. Remy was initially torn because he dearly wanted to cook, but was prevented by the expectations of both humans and rats about how a rat should live: rats shouldn’t interact with humans, rats shouldn’t be in the kitchen, it is the lot of rats in life to steal their food, etc. But he managed to escape all of that and forge a new life for himself in the kitchen, working with humans (or a human, at least, who accepted him), and cooking. He was being true to himself already. I don’t think his desire for public acclaim really added anything to the “rats and humans should learn to coexist” subplot (or whatever that message was supposed to be), especially since:

A. he’d already proved that was possible with Linguini,

B. he never actually manages to change the opinion of anyone else besides the critic and Collette, both of whom lose their jobs as a result; and
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Did the critic lose his job? I don’t remember that.

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
C. the rat/human status quo appears completely unchanged at the end.

If anything, they could have tied it all together a lot more neatly by having the health inspector have a change of heart. “Extraordinary! I… I see that this rat does have the talent you describe! Well… if he indeed washes his paws thoroughly while cooking… I suppose I could make… (glances nervously at enormous crowd of rats glowering at him outside window) --ONE exception…”
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Quite frankly, that sounds horrible.

Once the health inspector shows up, the restaurant has to be closed (making the ending not all that twisty). The way the movie handled seemed a much more natural happy ending, making ONE exception makes it a forced happy ending.

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
Yeah, okay, I guess I’d buy those explanations, but once again THEY WEREN’T IN THE FLIPPIN’ MOVIE!
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So? It seemed pretty obvious to me that the inspector left out the part about just what the rats are doing. Probably didn’t want to be thought of as a loony.

[QUOTE=Terrifel]
I appreciate your efforts to make this stuff work for me, though. I guess it was kind of a long movie already, but it would have been nice if they could have touched on some of this rather than just have “health inspector ex machina” swoop down to close Gusteau’s like the big foot in the Monty Python cartoons.
[/QUOTE]

Health inspector ex machina? The health inspector was foreshadowed very early in the movie on the health inspector poster in the kitchen. Not to mention we see Skinner actually call the guy.

127

I found it completely blasé. The animation was pretty, but nowhere near as visually stunning as Finding Nemo and the storyline was… completely uninspiring. Like most others in the thread, I didn’t feel any particular attachment to anyone, and also thought the idea of the kid triumphing over monkychef, getting his dad’s restaurant back, and winning over the food critic only to get shut down by the health inspector in the last few minutes was total crap.

In the end, I felt about it pretty much like I feel about Disney movies in general. Cute, but not anything like as clever as I expect a Pixar film to be. I love, love, love the others and only really felt neutral about Cars–even so, by the end I was on board. With this one I just couldn’t care about the story or characters at all.

128

Since this thread is still alive I have to once again take the opportunity to ask - what is up with Pixar and no female leads? Again an important character is female, but not the lead.

Aargh.

129

[QUOTE=ButterflyandBumblebee]
Since this thread is still alive I have to once again take the opportunity to ask - what is up with Pixar and no female leads? Again an important character is female, but not the lead.

Aargh.
[/QUOTE]

This is intentional. It’s done to balance out Disney’s Cinderella, Snow White, Pocahontas, The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Beauty & the Beast, etc., etc.

I’m also talking out my ass.

130

We went to see Ratatouille on Saturday.

So last night I made some! (The traditional version, not Remy’s elaborate reinterpretation of it.) Mmmmmm.

131

[QUOTE=mobo85]
I wasn’t offended by them- I thought they were funny. I was just making a point about what races and nationalities are OK to make fun of and what ones aren’t in today’s society. I understood that the Gusteau stereotypes were parodies of the cheap frozen foods and other products which are sold today and having the mascot dress up in various costumes- such as Paul Newman in a Roman headdress or a Russian cossack hat, etc.- and the person who would be most offended by them would be Gusteau himself. I actually thought it was very funny. I was just pointing out that dressing up as a Chinese person for the purposes of selling food is considered okay, but making fun of a Chinese accent, no matter what the case, is considered offensive. The idea of dogs being offended by a man in a dog suit speaking like Scooby-Doo was meant to be a joke on my part, but I guess it didn’t go through as such.
[/QUOTE]

That scene featured several stereotypical accents, stereotypical outfits for all the cut-outs, stereotypical pidgin Chinese for the product being advertised in that cut-out, and you think the fact that they didn’t give that cut-out a line of dialogue is evidence of PC sensibilities? Dude, that don’t make no sense at all.

132

[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic]
And maybe this is just the old line cook in me speaking but I never never quite get over my gorge at the sight of rat in a kitchen handling food. The scene with the whole kitchen swarming with rats was disgusting to me, not funny.
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The idea of the single rat chef wasn’t distasteful at all to me, but I admit the whole kitchen swarming with rats was. ecch.

Incredible detail. though.

133

[QUOTE=Miller]
I think Phase42 has the best answer so far: Remy cooks for his fellow rats, and only goes into the human kitchen to cook for Anton.
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I don’t think this is true. Before he heads to the kitchen at the end, Remy says something along the lines of “gotta go – dinner time rush,” indicating that he’s cooking for more than just Anton.

134

[QUOTE=MilTan]
I don’t think this is true. Before he heads to the kitchen at the end, Remy says something along the lines of “gotta go – dinner time rush,” indicating that he’s cooking for more than just Anton.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, he’s clearly the chef there. Why else would Anton invest? They didn’t need to open a restaurant just so Remy could cook for Anton.

135

I’ve read most of the thread and I still like the movie a lot. I don’t want to see CGI movies about humans, too much, I mean we have real movies about that. Remy was the star of the show and the cook was a bit too gangly and clumsy for me to really like him.

I loved Remy though. What a cute little rat.

136

[QUOTE=mobo85]
It was hard to tell, but it looked like the (laboratory?) tag on the muscular rat’s ear might have had the serial number A113, an inside joke referring to a CalArts classroom that is used by both John Lasseter and Brad Bird…
[/QUOTE]

Wiki says yes, you’re right. The oversized lab rat’s name was Git, and his ear tag bore the fabled A113.

Miller, thanks for your great, insightful comments. I actually like the movie more now, after having read that! I’d still have to put Ratatouille at the lower end of Pixar movies (The Incredibles and Monsters Inc. are still top in my book), but it’s still better than 95% of the cinematic junk out there. A favorite moment: Horst is talking about his shadowy past and says, “I once killed a man with my thumb. This thumb!” Then when Skinner tries to sneak in, Horst grimly displays the thumb again and throws him out.

The frizzy rats coming out of the dishwasher was also good. :smiley:

137

One quick question/observation about this film. Were all the dishes prepared by Remy vegetarian? Not sure about the soup, but sweet breads and Ratatouille certainly are. Other than the proposed frozen-dinner lines, were there any meat dishes at all in the film?

I took my 3-yr. old son to see the picture. We both enjoyed it, and understood the “be true to yourself/don’t get pigeonholed by others” theme. However, I personally think the movie could not ultimately overcome the fact that it was about rats preparing food; no matter how tolerant a person is, it’s difficult to make this acceptable under any circumstance. The tack-on ending after Gusteau’s closes seemed to confirm that fact for me: One rat, perhaps, can be made cute-enough to overcome the issue; a swarm in the kitchen (or anywhere nearby) just can’t.

I certainly don’t think the movie was a failure because of this–on the contrary, it was quite enjoyable–but I do think its a (small) problem. The film IMO is very good, but perhaps slightly overrated because it dwells on a theme that is fairly sophisticated by child-animation standards.

138

[QUOTE=CJJ*]
One quick question/observation about this film. Were all the dishes prepared by Remy vegetarian? Not sure about the soup, but sweet breads and Ratatouille certainly are.
[/QUOTE]

Sweetbreads are the thymus gland or pancreas of (usually, I think) a calf.

139

[QUOTE=CJJ*]
One quick question/observation about this film. Were all the dishes prepared by Remy vegetarian? Not sure about the soup, but sweet breads and Ratatouille certainly are. Other than the proposed frozen-dinner lines, were there any meat dishes at all in the film?

[/QUOTE]

Well, sweetbreads can have more than one meaning, but I assumed that they were talking about the meat one, which is common in French cooking.

140

[QUOTE=CJJ*]
One quick question/observation about this film. Were all the dishes prepared by Remy vegetarian? Not sure about the soup, but sweet breads and Ratatouille certainly are. Other than the proposed frozen-dinner lines, were there any meat dishes at all in the film?

[/QUOTE]

Ditto what others have said about sweetbreads. The soup at the beginning was also likely based on a beef or chicken stock, as vegetarian stock is far less common in French cooking.

I think there’s two reasons why we didn’t see Remi either by himself or with Linguini cooking meat. First, meat-cooking positions (grillardin and the like) in the French kitchen require more advanced training than the vegetable (garde-manger) training Collette was able to deliver in the time allotted. Second, and perhaps more importantly, chopping up chicken carcasses, boning legs of lamb, and trimming liver wouldn’t have been as clean and aesthetically pleasing as slicing veggies. A duck press alone could have given kids nightmares…