RATATOUILLE : [7/10] : US 07 : Brad BIRD : 111 mins (BBFC)
seen at Odeon, MetroCentre, Gateshead : 2nd October : press show

"After reading a lot of over-heated puffery... I'd like a little per--spec--tive..." So requests France's most feared restaurant critic at a key moment in Ratatouille: the endearingly daft tale of a rat who's a brilliant cook, and the culinarily-talentless  kitchen-skivvy who befriends him. Said critic - cadaverous Anton Ego (voiced by a movie-stealing Peter O'Toole) - is sitting down to feast at Paris's most talked-about eaterie, eager to finally establish whether the frenzy of hype and adulation surrounding the joint is remotely justified. This particular line of dialogue carries with it no small measure of inadvertent irony, since Ratatouille itself has - as of mid-October - been easily the USA's most critically-esteemed release of 2007.

So, is the "puffery" remotely justified? Kind of. By any standards, Ratatouille is tres bon: calculated to appeal to (nearly) all ages, inventive in its (CGI) technique, breezily post-modern in its smartness and cultural savvy (a bit of Perfume here, a sprig of Kitchen Confidential there, a soupcon of Cyrano there...) and commendable in its themes. How refreshing it feels for any American film, post-'Freedom Fries', to be so vocally pro-France, not to mention so unapologetically in favour of "excellence" in general and gourmet-cuisine in particular - and, now that Pixar's parent-company Disney have belatedly severed their links with McDonald's, there's no embarrassing 'Happy Meal' tie-in to leave the film-makers open to any whiff of hypocrisy.

In short, Ratatouille well up to the standard set by previous Pixar productions such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and Brad Bird's own The Incredibles. Considered alongside Bird's debut film, however - the commercially-disappointing The Iron Giant - Ratatouille's limitations become more glaringly apparent. The trouble is that, for a film which goes on and on about how important it is for talented individuals to pursue their own creativity and tear up the "recipe book," Bird (who reportedly took over as directorial "chef" from Jan Pinkava relatively late into production) steers a safe path and sticks to the tried-and-tested genre formula - perhaps understandably, given his Iron Giant experience. The familiar ingredients in this kind of fare (life-lesson homilies; cutely anthropomorphised animals, etc) are duly present and correct, and while they're handled with skill and elan - to the extent that we can forgive the numerous moments which go far beyond even cartoon-world suspension-of-disbelief - at no point do the resulting flavours feel particularly distinctive or surprising.

Nor do they ever seriously rival the last time verminous rodents, the catering trade and a particular 'peasant dish' were linked to comic effect on screen: classic Fawlty Towers episode 'Basil the Rat' ("He put Basil in the ratatouille?! Aaaargh!!") Of course, we don't all go to the pictures to have our "taste-buds" dazzled by the experimentations of a Heston Blumenthal, the cultural-fusions of a Testuya Wakuda, or the revolutionary breakthroughs of a Ferran Adria. But it's undeniably disappointing what's been hailed as such a supposedly sumptuous cinematic feast should turn out to be "merely" an elaborate and tasty amuse-gueule. 4/8.10.07