Monday, July 02, 2007

Ratatouille


Two movies this weekend! When my friend asked what I was thinking of seeing for Sat night, I said I had three... Die hard (see previous post), Sicko, and Ratatouillle. But I said, he would probably see Ratatouille with his daughter, he surprised me and said he had no desire to see it. I was a bit surprised, but understood his reasoning, in that it's been hyped like crazy for the past month or more. And with 9 minute trailers online, you pretty much get the whole gist of the story. But, I still have a softspot in my heart for all animation movies (aka cartoons). Especially Pixar who usually pushes the limit of animation technology (though I did not like Cars so much). So, somehow, he twisted this around, and offered me to take his daughter to the movies instead. I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, I had it in my mind that it was going to be a crazy madhouse with screaming kids, popcorn throwing, etc... but it wasn't as bad as I had imagined - though it was different. First off, I really enjoyed the movie. It got a little long winded there about 3/4 of the way through, and I really don't think that a kids movie needs to be a full 2 hours long! But, that's me. The animation was fantastic! There were two scenes that really blew me away, Remy (the main rat character voiced by Patton Oswald), climbs a rooftop and the camera pans up to show us a panorama of Paris France, It was an amazing site! It fooled me for a second to think "what a beautiful city". The other scene that amazed me was a shot where one of the rats was holding a piece of bread, you could see all the texture and air pockets of the bread! wow.
There were several funny parts too that made me chuckle out loud (COL?).
The environment was different than I was used to, there were kids reacting to the movie all around, laughs, giggles, gasps, questions, etc. I have a mixed feeling on this, on one end it was kinda cute (especially the laughs and giggles), but to hear a little kid ask a question was enough to bring me out of the movie. Or the constant crinkles of candy being opened was a little distracting too. But, I got over it all.
Lastly, the voice acting was terrific too. It surprised me that the waitress voice was Janeane Garofalo, I knew this ahead of time, but it didn't sound like her at all.
official website (kinda lame for a disney site) here.
imdb website here.
Ok, I wasn't going to gripe about this but I have to say something... it was yet another Disney movie with only one parent in the family. In fact, both of the main characters were without a mother. I kinda wish the folks at disney would move on from this. But I guess that's a disney trademark. The other thing in relation to this, the one character said his mother went to heaven. This kinda surprised me a little too, since it was sort of like an endorsement of a religion. I know, I'm reading too much into a kids movie.
OH - I almost forgot... my friends daughter enjoyed the movie too :)

No comments: