Ratatouille

There's a certain appeal of the animated movie these days. We get far more of them, and no longer are they solely the domain of children and dragged along parents. Complex plots and multi-layered jokes are added to keep the adults entertained, such as in the Shrek films, and some animation is made exclusively for adults, such as South Park or Family Guy.

At least, that's my excuse for seeing Ratatouille, and I'm sticking to it.

This is the latest film made by Brad Bird, the man, the genius who brought us The Incredibles, a film which showed what every comic book fan already knew; that only animation can properly portray superpowers on the big screen. With Ratatouille, Bird has set himself a different challenge. Can an animated film convey the complete experience of good food?

Since the audience cannot experience the smells or tastes of the food, Bird has gone all out on the visuals and the sound. The water in the sewers is phenomenal in looks and sound. The kitchen scenes are filled with detail, which doesn't diminish once you get outside into Paris. There's far too much to take in, including the pizza truck from Toy Story, which I missed (it's in almost every Pixar film) and Bomb Voyage, a villain from The Incredibles, as a street mime. There's a great perspective change between the humans and the rats, which is echoed in the final scene.

The story is fairly basic fare, an almost off the shelf plot if I'm honest, but I don't think that I cared. The film is very good at drawing the audience in, and creating believable characters. The children in the audience were fidgeting about half way through this, and I'm not sure if that was simply the running time or the more complex parts of the plot, but it certainly put a crimper in my enjoyment and I wished that I'd brought by power yo-yo to sling at the kid on the end of my row, as he mashed his feet up and down making that horrible sticky noise that only a cinema floor can accomplish. Perhaps I should go easy on him, he may have been inspired by this film to experiment with sound effects. On the other hand, he was bloody annoying.

And as usual, there's a brilliant short film at the start of the movie. It's fantastic. I had forgotten to expect this in Pixar films, so it was a pleasant surprise.

Score: B-

Not as good as The Incredibles (which I didn't expect it to be), but an excellent film, well made and fun to watch.

OQ: Welcome to hell! Trivia: To find out how to animate the scene where the chef is wet, they actually dressed someone in a chef suit, and put him in a swimming pool to see which parts of the suit stuck to his body, and which parts you could see through.