I went to Hoyts cinema two days ago ( Tuesday night ) after work, with Melz and Utie, to watch this movie.
At first I didn't want to watch it in cinema, thought I would download it, but after hearing some people saying that it's a good movie, I decided, alright I'll go to cinema.
Turns out, it's pretty good. A drama, with little comedy.
Before the movie begins, we are presented with a short animation movie by Pixar, called
Lifted. It's about an alien having an exam abducting a man who's a really heavy sleeper. Because eventhough the alien failed everytime and the man got thrown to the wall, he keeps sleeping. Pretty funny.
*spoiler alert*
Okay about
Rat-a-too-ee.
First we are introduced to
Chef Gusteau, a chef lives in Paris and have a famous restaurant. He's also a writer for a cooking book, "
Anyone can cook ".
But this movie is about a rat, named
Remy, who has special gift. He can smell anything and appreciate every taste. He lives in a house belongs to an old lady in the suburb with his big brother and his dad, who turns out to be the head of the rat clan. There are hundreds of rats there, and they've been stealing food from the old lady.
One day,
Remy saved his dad's life. He almost ate a rat-poisoned food.
Remy smelled it and his dad realized his talent. So he's been appointed to be poison detector. Feeling like living a boring life, he feels he wants to do more.
When he sneaked in to the old lady's kitchen, the TV was announcing news about
Chef Gusteau's book, and
Remy believed in what
Gusteau said. It's inspired him to be a cook, so when he found an old mushroom, he wanted to make something out of it.
The cute thing is, eventhough he's a rat, he understands that foods should be handled hygienically. He always washes his hands before handling foods.
He asked his brother to help him, and found some spices and cooked it on the roof with lighting as a fire =P. Then he realized he need saffron to make it better, so he and his brother sneaked back to the old lady's kitchen. She's always sleeping whenever the cooking show's on, so
Remy thought it was okay. Well it didn't. The TV announced some news about
Gusteau, he received bad critic from a food critic named
Anton Ego, and
Gusteau took the news terribly and resulted in his death.
Remy was shocked and when he got closer to the TV, the old lady woke up and spotted him. She went mad and kept shooting at them. In the end, the ceiling fell and the rats clan who have been living in the attic were exposed.
They were all trying to run away from the house, since the old lady wanted to kill them all. In the middle of the panic attempt to escape,
Remy remembered that he wanted to take the cooking book and got back to the house. Because of that, he got left behind when all of his family and friends are already in a "boat" in the river / sewer. He tried to catch up, but the old lady got in the way, she shot at the boats, missed it of course, but
Remy was separated with the clan when the sewer tunnel's parted into 2 ways.
Somehow
Remy was drifted further in the sewer, and while he was waiting desperately for a sign and hungry, an imaginary fairy, who resembles
Gusteau, appeared. He somehow became like a guardian angel for
Remy.
Fairy Gusteau suggested
Remy to explore the city to get food, and after a minute or two, he ended up on a roof, overlooking Paris, with
Gusteau's restaurant behind him.
Meanwhile, in the Gusteau's restaurant, there was a crisis happening because of Gusteau's death. It was short-staffed, and needed a garbage boy, there was a boy applying to get a job there, named
Alfredo Linguini.
( Does this name sound like a pasta menu ? It does to me. )He's clumsy and has no talent at all in cooking, yet he needed a job, so he obeyed his deceased mother's request who told him to apply for a job in Gusteau's, and apparently she knew
Gusteau and wrote a letter.
One day, when
Remy was observing the kitchen from a window in the ceiling, he saw that
Linguini spilled the cooked soup and was making a mess with the soup.
Remy was upset and fell from the window, and after running-and-hiding scenes for awhile, which can leave the audience with suspense =P,
Remy added some ingredients to the soup while escaping. He got carried away though, and spent some time in the stove, and didn't realized
Linguini was back and looking at him. When he was caught by
Linguini, the sous-chef,
Skinner, came and thought
Linguini was cooking while he was supposed to be cleaning and got really mad. A waiter came and took some of the soup, and after they got panic because they thought it was terrible, it turned out the soup was great. And
Skinner tried to punish
Linguini and fire him, but the woman chef,
Colette, convinced him that
Linguini can help the restaurant by asking him to make the soup again the next day.
While they were having the conversation,
Remy was trying to escape through the window and
Skinner saw him. All the chefs gone ballistic and wanted to kill it, but Skinner said it's better to throw it away because he wanted to keep the credibility of the restaurant. He asked
Linguini to do it, and
Linguini took
Remy to a river and tried to throw him to the river. But he couldn't do it, he felt bad himself and depressed and complained about his life. Apparently
Remy can understand him, so
Linguini got an idea, he can't cook, but
Remy can, so that they should be cooking partner.
Linguini took
Remy to his small flat, and the next day he found out that
Remy can control him by tugging his hair.
( I think it's weird, there was no explanation why it can happen. )So
Remy hid inside the chef hat.
Apparently,
Skinner was trying to take over the restaurant, and when he read
Linguini's mother's letter, it's clear that actually
Linguini is
Gusteau's son. And he tried to hide this fact and consult his attorney. His attorney advised him to try to get a hair or something from
Linguini to do DNA test with
Gusteau's hair.
Skinner tried to get some informations about
Linguini's talent by making him drunk. Meanwhile,
Remy was reunited with his brother, who was actually looking for food in the restaurant's trash bin,
Remy helped to steal some food from the fridge, and he was dragged back to the clan. But
Remy decided he wanted to continue to be a cook.
Linguini was attracted to
Colette, and when they got closer,
Remy felt abandoned. He was feeling sad, and one day, he was forced to steal food again from the fridge because his brother came with his friends, and when he found out the fridge was locked, he sneaked into
Skinner's office, he found
Gusteau's will and found out about the heir. He was caught by
Skinner and stole the documents and after some chasing scenes, he escaped.
In a nut shell, the restaurant was now owned by
Linguini, and
Skinner was fired. Feeling disappointed,
Skinner tried to get a revenge by contacting health inspector to report about rat's condition, but his appointment was full, and couldn't inspect Gusteau's soon.
Well time goes by. One day, because
Linguini was overwhelmed with fame and success, he and
Remy had a falling out and part ways.
Remy was furious and lead a rats raid to the kitchen. Somehow
Linguini felt bad and wanted to say sorry to
Remy, and he went back to the kitchen. When he found out that
Remy was conducting a rats invasion, he got mad and kick them all out.
Trouble arises when the
Anton Ego wanted to come again to the restaurant to review the new rising chef,
Linguini. In panic, and realizing that he was wrong to kick
Remy out, he confessed to the fellow chefs that it was
Remy who was talented, not him. He didn't get good reaction though, the chefs left him because they were disappointed. And feeling down,
Linguini gave up and stayed in the office.
Remy didn't want to give up, he wanted to cook, and with the help of all the rats, he controlled the kitchen,
Linguini became the waiter for the night. The funny part here is, the health inspector suddenly came and saw all the rats were working in the kitchen, and terrified. Then he was tied and hidden in the fridge =D.
Colette came back too, and with disbelief at first, she agreed to help
Remy.
Remy cooked
Ratatouille for
Anton Ego & Skinner who came in disguise to watch the food critic. It turned out the food was really good, it even brought
Ego back to childhood memory. When he asked to see the chef,
Linguini ask him to wait until all the customers left.
Ego agreed, because he really wanted to know who makes the food. In the end,
Linguini confessed and showed
Remy to
Ego.
Ego didn't seem to believe it at first, but after seeing
Remy remade the food, he left speechless.
The day after, the review was out. And it was great.
But still,
Remy was a rat, rat has an image that it's a nasty vermin, and because the health inspector already knew that the kitchen was full of rats, the restaurant was closed down.
Ego also loses his job as food critic, because he gave good review to a rat-infested restaurant.
But it all comes to the best.
Ego opened a small restaurant named
La Ratatouille with
Remy as head chef. And of course
Linguini & Colette were there.
Even though the restaurant was small, but it was warm and it has both dining facilities for human and rats. =D
~*~
This movie is more like a drama, rather than comedy. But although I was not laughing out loud, like when I was watching Shark Tale or Shrek 2, it's a good movie. 8/10. I don't regret watching it in the cinema.
Do watch it in the cinema.
PS :
But don't watch Surf's Up in the cinema. My friends said it's not worth it. Maybe just watch it in the dvd or something =P.
http://imdb.com/title/tt0119250/
