Captain Conroy's Pixar 40th Anniversary Marathon (Week 7)

Written by Captain Conroy

Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, Week 5 and Week 6 here.

While revenge may be a dish best served cold, an animated movie – especially a really good one is a dish that’s best served hot. Ratatouille knew this very well indeed and certainly tried its hardest to cook up a very special dish for us all, and I’m not just talking about the titular ratatouille either. This whole movie is one heck of a main course with plenty of spices thrown in to keep the taste buds going.

The main ingredient the movie needed was a good story and we definitely got one here. It’s the story of Remy, a rat living in France who is quite the oddball of the group as while the others are satisfied with eating garbage, he wants to create stuff and has a passion for cooking. Once separated from his colony, Remy winds up at Gusteau’s – a once popular restaurant in the shadows of its glory days which for Remy and his newfound friend Linguini is the perfect opportunity for him to follow up on his lifelong passion of being a chef, while avoiding obstacles along the way of course.

The story is a pretty unique take on the someone’s always different kind of story if you will, especially its subversion of usual tropes like rats not being the bad guys. Yes, not all rats are bad guys in stuff and I know, but what I mean is how well the story also showcases things from the rats’ perspective of life. At the end of the day they’re only trying to survive. But at the same time as this, they explain things well from the human perspective as well and how they come to a nice in-between as Remy knows not all of them want to kill rats – and the scene where Remy and his father Django are talking and he shows him the rat killing products is so brilliantly done for no-one’s really the straw man and each side makes valid arguments. That was so brilliantly done. But even for it though…

One does have to wonder who’s first instinct when they see a rat is to shoot it? Do you think her house insurance covers the damage? Heck, is this old woman even mentally stable?

But even with mother nature and its grand scheme of things, that is far from the only antagonistic force in this movie which also brings us to another of the movie’s strong points with the obstacles Remy and Linguini have to face along the way. We naturally have our antagonist in the form of Skinner, but it was also natural yet so easy how the biggest obstacle for our heroes is a very hard to please food critic – one Anton Ego. The backstory especially runs deep how he reviewed Gusteau’s and as he said in his own words, condemned it to the tourist trade and caused the loss of one of five stars which broke Gusteau’s heart which led to an untimely death for the chef. This really raises the stakes and makes you feel good for both Remy and Linguini once they succeed.

The story is certainly well executed and runs very deep for what could easily be seen as a silly kids movie about a cooking rat. No, no, it’s much more than that. Looking back on it for the first time in a long time, I was surprised for all the comedic moments, how mature this movie gets too – especially when we get to know what Ego had to say, those were some of the most meaningful words ever written in a movie and god bless Jan Pinkava, Jim Capobianco and Brad Bird for them. Looking back, A lot of these Pixar movies’ strong points come from the story and this one is certainly no exception.

The animation is certainly a lovely side-dish for this movie too. Already it has you asking this one question:

What is it with Disney properties in capturing Paris so well?

Yes, as you can see, Pixar animators prove their worth and join the line of accurately capturing Paris. As well as this we have the usual good usage of colours to represent times of day, if the characters hit a low point or even glow effects like from any of the TV screens. But if there’s one thing the animation puts a lot of emphasis on, it’s making the food actually look good enough to eat.

Let’s be real, surely this movie made you want to try ratatouille in itself after you saw it right? Or in the very least, make you a bit peckish during the viewing? This is particularly important as a lot of this movie revolves around cooking and the food has to be believable as something you would actually want to eat and if it can’t be sold through the visuals if the food looks fake or unappetising. This movie manages it so well to make the food look genuinely delicious and like something you would actually want to eat and it helps to create a believable look to this movie. There was one point where the animation could have been improved a little. At the start of the movie it’s raining and the rain looks a bit fake.

Hopefully this example can showcase what I mean. Yeah, it might not be a completely fair comparison as these movies came out at completely different times but nevertheless for how far the animation had come by the point of when Ratatouille had come out and for how good the rest of the animation looks, you’d think they’d make the rain look quite good but as both me and my brother were watching it, we noticed how the rain didn’t look half as good as the rest of the movie did. But that’s one downside to the rest of what is otherwise a beautifully animated movie which really makes good usage of what it’s been given to work with. A particular favourite of mine part of mine had to be how dark Ego looks and then gets a bit of colour back to his face after sampling Remy’s ratatouille to symbolise his change – that was so brilliant.

The characters are truly the cream of the dessert here. (O.K, I’m done with food puns now) well I said at the start someone has to be the oddball and that of course would be Remy. Remy is certainly an ambitious little rodent wanting to create rather than steal and his passion for cooking is certainly contagious and I love that about him. Like I said earlier with the story, I love how profoundly he makes his points but yet you can clearly see things from his father Django’s perspective too which makes for one of the best examples of an estranged relationship between a father and son. Heck, Django in himself could easily be seen as a douchy father say by a kid who’ll religiously follow the example of the main characters but in actuality, there are times it may not look like he does but he genuinely cares for Remy and for how easy it would have been to just leave the kitchen, he called everyone in to help. See peeps? He’s a good Dad after all.

Other characters include Colette – a tough and ambitious rôtisseur chef who aims to work hard and reach high and even becomes the love interest for Linguini – who is a down on his luck character and you do feel happy for him once he succeeds. The bond between him and Remy is quite adorable too. Skinner is one villain you just love to hate, especially as he did manage to get the restaurant closed down but yet Ego’s words still meant something and Remy and Linguini are still better off. Émile is pretty effective comic relief and there’s a bit more depth to him than just being the one that listens to his father, he too genuinely cares for Remy and while Django saw Remy as picky, Émile realises he has a gift. The other chefs in the kitchen don’t have as much going for them as the others, especially once they learn the truth, they just walk out. Give Colette credit, she came back but the others don’t. There’s no real reason for it either, they just do. They just callously abandon Linguini and leave all the diners at Gusteau's to potentially go hungry, thus shilling their responsibilities as chefs and waiters. And all because the real chef was a rat?

“You know what? You guys are jerks!”

Yes Puss, they are. But if there’s one character who’s above the rest, it’s easily Anton Ego.

Scary isn’t he?

Again when you have a movie about food and trying to get a restaurant up back to its former glory it only seemed natural to have a food critic play a somewhat antagonistic force. Ego plays this role beautifully. Yes, he could be seen as picky and hard to please – but he’s only doing his job and obviously a review can really make or break a chef’s reputation and Ego certainly did that to Gusteau. My favourite part about him is that while his pride wouldn’t allow him to accept that Gusteau’s had become popular again, he gracefully accepted his loss when he liked the ratatouille and still gave the restaurant a glowing review. He even takes it a face level instead of denying evidence in front of his face when Linguine and Colette reveal everything to him. As a result of this entire experience does he truly learn to love food again and he becomes genuinely nicer as you can see him raising his glass and nodding to another person at the other table. Losing his credibility after Gusteau’s shut down? Nothing to it, he becomes a business investor instead. All of this is accompanied by a masterful performance by the late great Peter O’Toole. All of this is even why Ego is my personal favourite character in this movie, so much depth and complexity to him.

Ratatouille certainly stands the test of time as one of Pixar’s more mature movies in my eyes. I mean the slapstick stuff aside, you get a strongly constructed story with it being very well-paced and it maturely tackles the subject rats and humans from both sides, the animation is a gorgeous as it ever was and a cast of characters each with their own levels of depth and complexity. It’s certainly one I didn’t give enough credit to back then, but now I can list it among the many other shining examples of my positive experience with Pixar movies and what makes me always hungry for more from them as well as looking forward to the next time I revisit this one.

Ah WALL.E, before Inside Out came along, this was my favourite one, surpassing Cars. I remember the trailers very well which immediately sold me on this movie and much like Cars, the toys were an absolute must. But of course the main question stands if whether or not I think it holds up. And the answer should be obvious really, yes it does. WALL.E has always truly been one of the greats of Pixar and hopefully I’ll be able to explain the best I can along the way as to why. Here goes!

Our story: environmental message – the movie. Nah, I’m kidding, there’s a whole lot more to this story than that. Mankind has deserted Earth for quite a long time due to a drastic change in environment and sustainability and they’re all aboard the Axiom awaiting a glorious day they return, but in the meantime cleaning up the mess is WALL.E – the sole survivor of the WALL.E robots who were supposed to be cleaning the mess up. But everything changes once he discovers a plant and EVE who works for the Axiom comes looking for it and finds it which then takes WALL.E on a journey he never could have anticipated – plus getting a nice bonus, love.

Already for the story, who says a romance between two robots can’t be adorable eh? It’s something which wouldn’t seem likely but yet they managed it. This whole story is well executed from start to finish. From its post human life setting to the antagonistic force being one of many precautionary tales as to what may happen if we become too reliant on AI. (Good to know that bloody lesson has yet to be learned though!) Once again great lengths had been gone to in order to ensure that the story couldn’t have been solved in 5 seconds. Anytime it could have been was very quickly subverted and thus created interesting ways for our heroes to get into trouble and how would they overcome it.

Everything in the story was well handled too I feel. From the themes of love to the stark contrasts of life on Earth at the present moment in time and on the Axiom. The story sees to it we witness great character development as we see WALL.E and EVE’s relationship develop and my favourite has to be when the Captain of the Axiom becomes less reliant on AI and manages to outsmart and defeat Auto – even being the first to walk and not need his chair in the process, so brilliantly done. The story for WALL.E holds up so brilliantly in all of its aspects and it’s another one of those stories where I feel I’d have to resort to nit-picking in order to find anything wrong with it, because as far as I’m concerned, this story has no real problems at all.

The animation is good, the animation is good, the animation is good, the animation is good, the animation is (record scratch) Sorry about that folks, the record is broken. Anyway it’s pretty much going to be a reoccurring thing as no matter what Pixar movie I watch, the animation is always such a strong point with them, so I’ll certainly do my best to describe it without sounding too repetitive. Starting with the way the movie makes outer space look. Coming this far into my rewatch, I’m beginning to feel like each Pixar movie has its own specialty in something and for me with this movie it’s outer space. The outer space setting is a spell-binding spectacle using everything at its disposal. When we get close to the sun I can genuinely feel the warmth and different usages of colour pallets represent different parts of outer space very well. The great use of colours especially come into play when WALL.E utilises a fire extinguisher to help him get around in space and share a tender moment with EVE, that moment was purely magical. Only appropriate as Disney has a heavy theme on magic does it not?

But the rest of the movie looks great too, not just the space settings. It truly is a wonder as we explore the high tech setting of the Axiom, it’s truly a spaceship which shows that Buy N’ Large spared no expense making these ships as grand and as luxurious as it possibly could look while adding a futuristic twist. In a stark contrast, I mentioned earlier about the post human life setting in the story, the animation really helps to bring to life the creative vision of what their idea of a post-apocalyptic world if you will, would look like. Each setting has its own unique colour palette and the setting on Earth really shows how well WALL.E makes use of all the rubbish and takes recycling to a whole new level. The way the explosion was animated when EVE blew up a ship was quite realistic too. Speaking of realism, it’s amazing how well the movie blends animation and live action too, like it doesn’t look the slightest bit out of place. Except perhaps the board displaying all of the Axiom Captains and we see the current one but still it’s all so fabulously done. As always I can never fault the top notch animation that comes with a Pixar movie and WALL.E’s is certainly no exception.

The characters – at least some of them are great examples of show and not tell and show how well you can actually get by on little dialogue. WALL.E, EVE, MO and the other robots that aren’t the Autopilot showcase this mostly. They don’t speak much but yet they’re still able to effectively help tell the story. WALL.E in particular is adorable and once again just how do they make the romance between him and EVE, two robots so heartfelt? EVE is definitely one of Pixar’s best girls, even if she is a little trigger happy.

N-n-not that there’s anything wrong with that of course. Heh-heh!

EVE is a shining example as to why especially in a day and age where people complain about woke culture, you shouldn’t give a damn about one’s gender, just a well written character. They’d achieve this with Cruz Ramirez later on in Cars 3 as well. EVE is one for following directive but yet develops freewill as well. Her gun is powerful yes, but she isn’t completely invincible as we see when she and WALL.E are overpowered by Auto and GO-4 at one point.

And speaking of the devil, Auto is by far one of Pixar’s most interesting villains. His motive? He’s simply following his own directive and he isn’t prepared to let anyone or anything stand in his way which made for great character contrast between him and the Captain once he has the plant and Auto refuses to let him do what needs to be done. The Captain in himself is also a breath of fresh air compared to most authoritative figures. Some are idiots but he is not. He even has some of the best development as he finds ways to outsmart Auto and like I said earlier when he gets and starts using his legs, he really starts to show he is not to be trifled with, even after all this time of not using his legs. So brilliantly done. The others robots each have their own quirks and unique designs which helps you remember them, even if all of them don’t get named. Some of them provide good comic relief and some of them even make for great helping hands for dealing with the police bots. But as far as secondary robots go, I like MO, he’s funny. This is yet another in Pixar’s library which has for you a fine cast of characters you’ll certainly want to revisit anytime you watch the movie again.

Funny the previous review was Ratatouille, a film that features characters drinking wine, for this movie alone has aged like a fine wine. All of the aspects like the story, the animation and the characters are all extremely well done and once you put them all together, you have the makings of what is none other than one of, if not Pixar’s finest work. It’s definitely up there with all of the many other greats. Naturally things can be subject to change but so far on this rewatch, Inside Out 1 and 2 I have fresh enough in mind to still call my favourites, but I’ll still rewatch them anyway for this celebration. WALL.E will be a very close second – and naturally do stay tuned for a top 5 at the end of this rewatch. But for now, WALL.E is always a movie I can rely on for a good time, I’ve seen it so many times and I’ll definitely be watching it several times more. So that wraps this one up, and speaking of Up, that movie is the next one…em, “up” for review. LOL. And Brave as well, so join me for those ones. Until next time, cheery-bye!