Breaking News: Pixar Fanboy Gushes about Ratatouille
This past weekend, White Mage and I got a chance to see Pixar and Brad Bird's latest magic joyfest, Ratatouille. Chris, Caspian, and their respective ladyfriends were also in attendance.
As with all Pixar films, I've been excited to see this ever since the first teaser trailer came out. They just do everything so right. Pixar owns the world of CG animated movies, and there is no disputing that fact.
For those of you who don't know, Ratatouille is the story of a rat named Remy who is born with an amazing sense of smell. Not content with eating garbage like his rodent brethren, he sneaks into the house in the French countryside where his colony is inhabiting the walls and puts together culinary delights for himself to snack upon while watching his favorite TV chef, August Gusteau. An accident forces them all from their home and Remy gets seperated but ends up in the sewers below the late Gusteau's very own restaurant in Paris. Remy befriends a clumsy garbage boy from the kitchen of the restaurant and uses him to live out his dream of being a famous chef.
Voiced by the incomprable Patton Oswalt, Remy is a wonderful character who you really believe has a deep passion for food and cooking. Oswalt's standard stand-up comedy delivery is perfect for the character. The other voice actors in the movie also do a fantastic job because Pixar knows how to pick people who would be appropriate for the character whereas other CG movie studios design their characters specifically around a pre-picked voice actor. If you don't know ahead of time that Janeane Garofalo is in the movie, you'd never be able to tell because she doesn't just play herself. Ian Holm is the same as the evil antagonist chef who now owns Gusteau's and is trying to make a quick buck of the famous name. But a great performance is turned in by the actor for the hapless garbage boy, Alfredo Linguini. Linguini is voiced not by a famous actor, but by a member of the friggin' Art Department at Pixar. That's right, the second most important character in the whole damn movie isn't even an actor. That's how you know Pixar's got the skills to make movies. It doesn't matter who they are, Pixar picks the right person for the character. Brad Garrett and Peter O'Toole also make short, but memorable apperances.
And the animation. Oh, the animation. The sweet, wonderful animation. I could watch that whole movie without sound and just sit there in awe of the art and animation and still be totally enthralled. Pixar takes 4-5 years on a single movie and it shows in every single frame. Just look at this picture of Remy down below. Click for the super-duper-ultra-hi-res.
Look how much detailing is done on every last micrometer of this little rat. It's just beautiful. I swear that Pixar takes as much time making one single scene of their movie as studios like Dreamworks take to make their whole film. They use the CG as a wholly different medium and explioit every possibility out of it. Dreamworks uses CG like a shortcut, a quick way to make a movie without having to work hard at it. During the whole movie, I was thinking about how realistically every single character moved and that it has to be real animation, because you can tell when a movie takes the easy way out and just does MoCap. And then, at the very end of the credits (don't worry, this isn't a movie spoiler), as if Pixar were talking directly to me, there is a label that says, "Made with 100% real animation. No motion capture or other shortcuts were used in the making of this film." They may as well have just said, "Screw you, Dreamworks. Get the hell off our coattails."
Hell, just look at the detail on the screw on the side of the logo/sign. You'd never know it's there. 99% of people will never ever notice that it's a screw at all, but Pixar puts in the effort anyway because they care.
You all need to go see this movie right now. I wanna go again. And I'm sure as hell snatching up the DVD the moment it is released. While not my favorite Pixar film, this one is right up there nearby. And even when a movie is only fairly good (Cars) by Pixar standards, it's still a fantastic movie when compared to the standards of other studios. Pixar just gets it. John Lasseter is the new Walt Disney and we all know it. And there could not be a better successor to carry on the legacy of the man who made the mouse.
