Ratatouille: Movie Review

Ratatouille is a wonderful, savory concoction from the incredible Pixar team. Long ago, the Pixar team decided they didn’t want to do sequels but explore new territory in each of their movies. Ratatouille is a delightful exploration of food, fame, France, and fantastic characters who at first seem very unpalatable but turn out to be deliciously entertaining.

The movie opens with Remy the rat narrating his story. He is not the cuddly Mickey Mouse of yesterday’s Walt Disney Company. Instead, he’s a rat that most people would want to avoid. But, Remy has high aspirations. He has a finely tuned taste and smell palette, has taught himself how to read, and wants to become a great chief like his hero, Auguste Gusteau.

When the mistress of the farmhouse where Remy’s colony resides tries to blow them off the face of the earth with her shotgun, they all get carried away on the river, into the sewers to Paris of all places. When Remy wakes up after his harrowing escape, he is talking to Auguste who died recently. Remy recognizes that Auguste is a figment of his imagination, but his internal dialogue leads him straight to Gusteau’s famous restaurant.

Since Gusteau died, the restaurant has fallen on hard times. It is now run by the mean-tempered new chef, Skinner.

In an unlikely scenario, Remy teams up with the new garbage boy Linguini, who may be Gusteau’s heir, to take the culinary world of Paris, and Skinner, by surprise. The villains are set against Remy and Linguini, including Skinner, who tries to pry Linguini’s secrets out of him by getting him drunk, and the fiercesome food critic Anton Ego, who looks down on Gusteau’s motto that “Anybody can cook.”

As one might expect in Paris, this gourmet meal includes a touch of love, a lot of humor, some fantastic action, and some of the most delightful food scenes in the history of cinema. Ratatouille is a near great movie. It does have some issues, however. Linguini is plied with enough wine to get him drunk. The rats are not only difficult to embrace, but they also steal when told not to do so. Also, some of the cartoon violence skews toward older children and teenagers. However, there are many mentions of moral principles to counteract this, and the overall storyline is very pro-capitalist, pro-individual, and supportive of the gifts that the individual has no matter what his background or genetic makeup. The movie also has a reference to godliness in that old non-biblical saying about cleanliness, and there is a reference to Heaven.

The real Christian theology comes in the fact that the movie makes it clear that anyone can be a chef, although not everyone can be a great chef. Thus, like the divine meritocracy instituted by the Declaration of Independence, the movie strongly suggests that all people are created equal by God, who grants everyone the right to pursue personal happiness while they pursue their individual service to God’s divine authority. Whether the humanist pundits who believe in biological and economic determinism pick up on the radical nature of this premise is anyone’s guess, but it is nice to see a movie taking the side of free enterprise and freedom to be who you want to be.

NOTE from Dr. Ted Baehr, publisher of Movieguide Magazine. For more information from a Christian perspective, order the latest Movieguide Magazine by calling 1-800-899-6684(MOVI) or visit our website at www.movieguide.org. Movieguide is dedicated to redeeming the values of Hollywood by informing parents about today's movies and entertainment and by showing media executives and artists that family-friendly and even Christian-friendly movies do best at the box office year in and year out. Movieguide now offers an online subscription to its magazine version, at www.movieguide.org. The magazine, which comes out 25 times a year, contains many informative articles and reviews that help parents train their children to be media-wise consumers.