Ratatouille Blu-ray review

I’m one of the few hold-outs who believe that, as important as Pixar has been in the world of computer animated movies, it’s yet to make its first truly great film. The Toy Story sequel ran it close, sure, but Pixar is more in the habit, it seems, of making good to very good films, rather than outstanding ones. It’s more than most have been doing with their computer animation, to be fair.

Last year’s Ratatouille was, for my money, as good as anything Pixar has done to date. It’s the imaginative and tightly-written story of Remy the Rat, who always longs to cook. Through a lowly restaurant worker called Linguini, he finds a way to do so. Under the ghostly guidance of late, legendary chef Gusteau, Remy discovers said chef’s restaurant, and through a series of events, is soon cooking food through Linguini. Being a rat, it’s best not to be seen to be doing the cooking, and thus for a good chunk of the film, Remy lives under Linguini’s hat, pretty much literally pulling the strings so that the latter can appear to be doing the cooking for him.

It’s a neat conceit, and played at times in a joyously slapstick way that harks back to the Chuck Jones shorts of old. And this is where Ratatouille really strikes gold. Some of the wild chase sequences embrace the work of people like Jones, but add modern, cutting edge animation techniques to the mix. The result is an affectionate and charming tale, with some memorable characters (none more so than a restaurant critic voiced with sneer and menace by Peter O’ Toole).

Ratatouille still has one or two flaws – if you were being really picky you could argue it overruns very slightly, for instance – but it’d be churlish to dwell too much on them. Because here’s a film that tries something different, that bothers to inject originality and, all things considered, is a terrific piece of family entertainment.

As for the Blu-ray presentation? This is flat out the best looking disc I’ve seen on any high definition format. Animation has, since both HD DVD and Blu-ray stepped into the world, had the better deal in terms of reference standard work (some of the imagery on Happy Feet looks utterly glorious in 1080p), but the astounding level of detail on offer here is stunning. It helps, of course, that Ratatouille’s visual palette is one so vibrant and alive, but nonetheless, the picture is pretty much without fault.

The 5.1 surround mix – supplied on the disc in uncompressed PCM – makes strong use of the soundstage, although the film’s audio won’t give an action-movie style workout. It will, however, demonstrate a depth and subtlety to a good audio rig, and again, it’s hard to grumble.

The extra features are bountiful, too, but sadly they’re lacking perhaps the one most of interest. The production of Ratatouille was problematic to say the least, with Brad Bird only coming on board eighteen months before the film was released and restricting elements of the film. That’s horrendously late to swap directors on an animated film, but the extra features don't dig into the story, and that’s a hell of a pity.

That said, there’s still some decent material on the disc. Some deleted scenes are okay (although they’re not completed), and there’s a short feature talking about food and films. The short that proceeded Ratatouille at the pictures, Lifted, is included, and it’s superb, however.

Exclusive to Blu-ray is a fun but forgettable little game where you get to be a chef and have to keep up with the assorted demands as the food orders come through. There’s also a Brad Bird commentary track that’s well worth a spin, and he’s joined by Brad Lewis, the film’s producer. Also included are some of the briefings that Bird gave to his animators on the project, along with some making-of featurettes.

One thing, and this does hint at one or two problems in the high-definition world. When the disc was loading up, we were warned of delays of up to two or three minutes, which presumably relates to those without more recent Blu-ray profile software. We ran Ratatouille on a fully-updated PS3, so didn’t hit problems, but can’t say we’d be impressed if we were hanging around waiting a couple of minutes for things to load up. There were also – grrrr – forced adverts at the start of the disc that needed jumping through. That’s going to need a fuller rant at some point, though.

Still, Ratatouille is a strong film, with broad demographic appeal, and for the visual presentation alone, it’s worth treading a high-def path. You can’t help but think that, when it comes to the supplements, that the real story has yet to be told, though…

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