Not even a minute into Ratatouille the other night, the cinetrix was staring at the screen in gobsmacked disbelief and pawing through her bag for a notebook and a pen. Still stunned, she scribbled one word in the darkness: Goodfellas.
It may seem like a stretch to liken Pixar's culinary rodent to anything in Scorsese's flick, but stay with me here. The shot that got me was a freeze frame of Remy the rat sailing through a shattering glass window clutching a copy of his hero Auguste Gusteau's Anyone Can Cook. Then his voiceover kicks in. No, he doesn't announce, "My whole life I wanted to be a gangster." Remy wants to be a chef. However, the Pixar kids do deftly lift the mob flick's flashback framing device, voiceovers, and occasional freeze frames to tell Remy's scrabbling story of leaving his provincial colony and rising to the heights of Parisian haute cuisine.
Even given such savory bona fides, it took the cinetrix a while to shake the skeeved feeling of watching the adventures of--you know--a rat, no matter how plucky and personable. But once he's hidden, tucked under the hapless Linguini's towering toque, Remy gets cooking, turning around the failing fortunes of Gusteau's once-famed restaurant on the strength of a savory soup.
I could sense the 'Fesser grinning giddily in the dark next to me as the camera moved lovingly past the saucier's station, hovered over various mise-en-place, and lingered to admire the knife work of the lone female chef, Colette, who arrives at work each day with her case tucked smartly under her arm. [The cinetrix admits to being a little in love with Colette, mostly because she wears clogs. But I digress....] No longer can we scoff at the animators' cushy-sounding apprenticeship alongside Thomas Keller and research trips to Taillevent. This is some of the most convincing cooking ever seen on screen.
The same attention to detail also extends into the dining room, which makes the cinetrix suspect that there's the makings of quite a parlor game if you can recognize the animated patrons. And, of course, the copper pots gleam and the water glistens and you can almost smell the tarragon and taste the chardonnay--yay, algorithims!
But, days later, I'd say Ratatouille's most astonishing achievement is twofold. First, the film cleverly animates the Proustian experience of biting into a lovingly prepared dish. It tastes overwhelmingly of home and childhood and individual flavors swirl on screen like escapees from Ken Nordine's color wheel.
Second, and perhaps more impressive, Ratatouille turns the rogues' gallery of felons and malcontents behind the Michelin stars--whom Tony Bourdain celebrated in all their hard-R splendor in Kitchen Confidential--into a genial G-rated gang. OK, they stopped short of creating action figures for Horst et al., which is a pity. One can, however, pick up a plush Anton Ego doll. Imagine the thrill of tucking your child in at night clutching a critic!
Incidentally, that's all the cinetrix has to say about Ego: She'd would like to think she's smart enough not to trip a baited trap.
