Hungry for More

Hungry for More

Ratatouille (2007) was not the first film I saw that made me love movies. It didn’t even make me love animation. That title would probably go to one of the Disney Renaissance classics or maybe even one of the crappy Barbie movies I watched religiously as a kid. Ratatouille was the first film I saw that made me love criticism.  

© Disney

As with most Disney and Pixar films, the animation, soundtrack, and lovable characters make it a film that anyone can enjoy. I never saw it in theaters, but watched it the same way I saw most movies throughout my childhood: on DVD, in the living room, with various family members scattered about. I can distinctly remember asking my mom to press play while the little looping animation played over and over on the menu screen. The story itself is about a rat who wants to become a chef and does so by puppeteering a man who happens to work at one of the most prestigious restaurants in Paris: Gusteau’s. It’s a charming story, and executed well; supported by lovely animation, and a fantastic soundtrack. The main musical theme, a french song I can never understand nor remember the words to but has somehow ingrained itself forever in my mind, strikes a particularly nostalgic chord for me. But there is more to this film that makes it great, and because this is an essay about why it is great to me specifically, I won’t go into much detail about how this is one of the objectively greatest Pixar films out there. There is a fantastic video essay by Schafrillas Productions on YouTube that goes into why Ratatouille is the best movie Pixar has made, and delves deeper into Pixar as a studio and why their stories can hold such deep meaning for so many people. 

The central message of the film, that “anyone can cook,” stuck with me the same that it stuck with most others who watched it, and I applied its meaning to aspects of my life much broader than just cooking. However, my favorite scene and line of the film, perhaps one of my favorites out of any movie, is when Anton Ego, the main antagonist and the harshest food critic in all of france, reads his critique of Gusteau’s Restaurant: "The bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so… In the past, I have made no secret of my disdain for Chef Gusteau's famous motto; "anyone can cook." But I realise, only now do I truly understand what he meant. Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere." I get chills every time I watch this scene. This speech is what made me want to explore the world of criticism, and was so meaningful to me that I found it necessary to quote part of it in the profile of my blog. It’s the idea that anyone can create art, and any art can be great to somebody. Whether it be of movies, literature, or food in this case, Ratatouille introduced me to the true art of criticism. You can break down a work of art into rigid little pieces and analyze each one for all its good or bad qualities, and yet it will still be meaningful to someone, somewhere. Those Barbie movies that I watched for hours on end as a kid? Utter garbage. But it’s garbage that means more to me than any of the great classics that show the utmost perfection of filmmaking. 

Overall, the plot of Ratatouille isn’t perfect; not all the characters are completely fleshed out, and there are a few distinct issues with the concept itself. However, the message is one of the most powerful of any movie I’ve ever seen. Every time I finish watching Ratatouille, I feel the same way that Anton Ego did at the end of his critique of Gusteau's: hungry for more.