Ratatouille: Grade B

B
Ratatouille (2007)
Patton Oswalt, Ian Holm, Lou Romano, Brian Dennehy, Peter O’Toole, Janine Garofalo (voices). Writer and Director Brad Bird, Co-director Jan Pinkava.

I give this movie a B rather than a C because of fine animation (except for the oddity that Remy, the main rat, was blue). Pixar has set a standard for animation that few others will be able to achieve. The tone does not strive to virtual reality, but conveys a magic world, like Snow White did in another generation. But the narrative content has the stamp of the Disney pablum “message” (Never give up your dreams; anyone can achieve anything...), and despite a few witty lines, the script is prosaic. O’Toole, the implacable food critic, is by far the best character and the best voice, but we don’t get much of him. I also wanted more food jokes, garbage jokes, cooking jokes, satire of the haute cuisine world, parody of French food obsession, even more rat jokes, something, anything that would convey the comedic point of the movie. But there is no point. It’s just rats acting cute. And how cute can rats really be? When the kitchen is seething with thousands of them, it’s creepy. The animation is so precise that when they move, they really do look like scurrying rats, and that’s creepy too. Maybe kids wouldn’t mind, since they do not associate rats with the Plague and so on. But I think kids need more than cute characters to sustain them and even the pernicious Disney glorification of individualism seems like an afterthought.

Wild Hogs: Grade C

C

Wild Hogs (2007)

Tim Allen, John Travolta, Martin Lawrence, William H. Macy, Ray Liotta, Marisa Tomei. Director Walt Becker.

Four professional men in their 40’s and 50’s are fed up with suburban life and decide on a cross-country motorcycle trip. They wear “Wild Hogs” insignia on their black leathers. Harley-Davidson obviously helped finance this movie. It’s like City Slickers on bikes, only not as funny. Disney owns Touchstone Pictures, who put out this movie, and this has the heavy hand of Disney stereotypy. The first hour is so full of lame, juvenile homophobic “jokes” that I almost quit watching. Who finds that stuff funny? I think even young kids are more sophisticated than that nowadays. But the humor picks up slightly in the last half and that saved the movie for me. Acting is completely adequate. Macy does a great job. There are some funny one-liners and a “surprise” cameo at the end is a hoot, so overall the movie made me smile even as it made me more annoyed with the pernicious social influence of the Disney corporation.

Cars: Grade B

B

Cars (2006)

Owen Wilson, Paul Newman, Larry the Cable Guy, Cheech Marin, others (as voices). Director John Lasseter.

Animation is the star of this Pixar/Disney movie. Throughout, I marveled at the computing power needed to render the complex reflections and motion effects that made the animated surfaces and movements look so good. In fact the weakest part was the background scenery, which Snow White artists could have done as well. Also, everything was too bright. Even the shadows were bright, which detracted from the realism. The car characters however were near-perfect, despite some anthropomorphic awkwardness involving hands, arms and shoulders (how would a car operate a camera, anyway?) Wilson was perfect in the lead.

The story is typical sentimental claptrap reinforcing normative stereotypes, which is why I find all Disney films so depressing. In this case the themes were that community trumps individualism, simplistic aesthetics are best, cramped, change-resistant, small-minded, small town values are best, all steeped in 60's nostalgia. Still, the voice acting was terrific, the realizations of character in the cars was excellent, and the dialog was genuinely funny, subtle at times, and consistently strong enough to sustain the piffle of a story. I understand that NASCAR is all the rage these days, but I had to fast forward through many repetitive turns around the track. The extended tipping tractors joke could have been cut. Kids will love this movie for decades to come.