Ratatouille (June 27/07)

Despite the inclusion of some seriously impressive visuals, Ratatouille is ultimately one of the most uneven and least compelling efforts from Disney's Pixar Animation Studios to date - something that's due primarily to filmmaker Brad Bird's egregious emphasis on slapsticky, overtly silly bits of comedy. There's simply no shaking the feeling that the movie's been geared primarily towards children, and while it's not a stretch to imagine younger viewers enjoying the heck out of the various characters' wacky misadventures, adults will undoubtedly spend much of Ratatouille's running time searching for something of substance to latch onto.

It's a shame, really, as the movie is initially just as spellbinding as anything within the Pixar canon. There's little doubt that the first-act hijinks of Remy (Patton Oswalt), the Parisian rat with an unusual passion for food, sets the bar at a level that the rest of the film can't quite touch, particularly as the focus shifts to a klutzy would-be chef named Linguini (Lou Romano). The bond that forms between the two characters is cute enough - with Remy agreeing to help out Linguini in the kitchen - but Linguini's unreasonably oafish and over-the-top persona makes it increasingly difficult to sympathize with his predicament (he must keep the rat's presence a secret from Ian Holm's villainous Skinner).

That many of the supporting characters are French isn't a problem in and of itself, although there's certainly no denying that key bits of dialogue are often smothered by their impossibly thick accents (this is particularly troublesome whenever Skinner and Janeane Garofalo's Colette open their mouths). The voice performances are otherwise quite superb, with Oswalt, Dennehy, and particularly Peter O'Toole (as snobby food critic Anton Ego) transforming their respective characters into engaging, surprisingly three-dimensional figures.

Ratatouille is pleasant and diverting enough to warrant a mild recommendation, but it's virtually impossible not to feel a twinge of disappointment at its continued emphasis on juvenile hijinks - while the inclusion of several heavy-handed moral messages near the film's conclusion certainly doesn't do it any favors.

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