Ratatouille

Ratatouille is Pixar's eighth feature film. It was released in theaters on June 29, 2007.

Ratatouille is the last Pixar film to used the CGI 1995 Walt Disney Pictures logo. It's also the first to be released after Disney purchased the company, and the last Pixar film distributed by Buena Vista Distribution before it was retitled to just Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, starting with their following film, WALL•E.

Synopsis
Ratatouille is set in Paris, France, and focuses on a rat named Remy who dreams of being a chef. He sets out to make his dreams come true, and soon he and a young human chef named Alfredo Linguini end up working together in a race to foil the schemes of Chef Skinner.

Plot
The movie opens up showing a televised document about French chef, Auguste Gusteau. Gusteau is the owner of a 5-star restaurant, Gusteau's, being the youngest chef to ever have a 5-star rating and having a best selling book, Anyone Can Cook. Everyone loved Gusteau, except for food critic Anton Ego. Throughout the years, Ego tries to put down Gusteau's reputation as he doesn't believe in his motto, "Anyone Can Cook."

The movie then shifts to Remy, a Parisian rat who lives in the attic of a French country home owned by an old woman with his brother Emile and a pack led by his father Django. Remy is gifted with a keen sense of smell and taste, which he used to save his father from eating food that was covered with rat poison. By this point, Django suddenly believed that Remy's gift was great. Remy felt pleased about this until Django gave him the job of being poison checker, which involved smelling all the stolen food to tell whether it was poisoned or not. Unlike the other rats, Remy disliked garbage food and is fascinated by the humans, to Django's dismay. Django forbids Remy to go into the kitchen (where all the food isn't poison) and away from the humans as they are dangerous. But Remy ignores his father and goes into the kitchen of the house and watches documents of Gusteau, who Remy heavily admires.

The next day, Remy finds a mushroom, and with the help of Emile, Remy cooks the mushroom with the cheese Emile found on the rooftop of the house. However, lightning strikes the two, but it also cooks the mushroom Remy was preparing, in which Remy takes a huge liking too. Remy wants to add saffron to it, but it is in the kitchen. As Remy searches for it, Emile is feeling really uncomfortable being in the kitchen, scared that the old lady will wake up. Aside from his great sense of smell, Remy also reveals that he can read and have watched television, something rats never do and approve of. As Django gets impatience waiting on Remy and Emile, Remy shows the document of Gusteau to Emile on the television. But the document reveals that Gusteau has passed away, shocking Remy. The old lady wakes up and is shocked to see both Remy and Emile. She grabs a shotgun and shoots at the two. Emile tries to run back into the colony, but the old lady shoots the roof causing Emile to hang loose on the chandelier. Remy saves Emile and returns to the colony as the old lady tries to reload her gun. She succeeds and shoots the roof but fails to kill the two. The roof breaks open, revealing the colony, shocking the old lady even more. The rats evacuate, but Remy returns to get the book. As the last rat in the house, the old lady returns with rat poison. Remy successfully escapes and tries to catch up with the clan, who are on their escape boats on a river. Remy tries to catch up, but the old lady shoots at them. Remy tries to catch up with them by paddling with the spatula they gave him. Remy loses the clan after taking a wrong turn and falling into a waterfall and through a series of rapids.

Remy flows into a sewer and waits for the clan to find him, but they never did. Remy reads Gusteau's book and gets hungry, in which an imaginary figure of Gusteau appears in front of his eyes. Urged on by Gusteau, Remy makes his way up to the sewers and into an apartment complex, where he finds bread. Gusteau, however, stops Remy and tells him that "a cook makes, a thief takes". Remy decides to leave and heads to the roof of the apartment, to find that he's been below Paris all along and finds Gusteau's restaurant. In the kitchen of the restaurant, a young man named Alfredo Linguini awaits in the kitchen to meet the chef, Skinner, the restaurant's current owner and Gusteau's former sous-chef. Linguini is the son of Renata, one of Gusteau's ex-girlfriends who recently passed away. Linguini gives Skinner a letter from his mother in hopes that it'll help him get a job at the restaurant. Skinner ignores this, but the kitchen chef seems to already hire him, as the garbage boy. Meanwhile, Remy heads to the restaurant's kitchen skylight to watch the staff in action and identifies the roles of each kitchen staff. He also observes Linguini, who he calls a nobody working in the kitchen. When Linguini spills some of the soup and attempts to recreate it using random ingredients, Remy is horrified and enraged. Overreacting, Remy accidentally falls into the kitchen's sink. He tries to escape, but his attempts always failed as he gets knocked out numerous times. As he finally had the chance to escape, Remy gets caught up remaking the horrid soup Linguini created by adding in species to his liking. Encouraged by Gusteau, Remy decides to finish the soup only to be caught by Linguini. As Skinner comes to get the soup, Linguini traps Remy and is caught by Skinner, in which Skinner believed that Linguini was cooking in his kitchen. However, during the confrontation, someone took some of the soup to serve it to a guest. Observing the guest's reaction to the soup, Skinner had believed the soup was a failure and angrily fires Linguini until the guest asked for the chef. The guest turns out to be Solene LeClaire, a food critic who likes the soup and found it a success. Skinner doesn't believe that Linguini actually makes the soup and still is on the verge to fire him. However, Colette, the staff's only female chef, convinces Skinner to retain Linguini, believing him to be behind the success of the soup. Also, she reminds Skinner of Gusteau's motto and that if he was to be fired after LeClaire writes the review about it, the restaurant would lose their reputation. Skinner decides to keep Linguini and let Colette take care of him. As Remy is escaping, he is spotted by Skinner. Linguini traps Remy in a jar and Skinner orders him to kill him, away from the kitchen.

Linguini heads to the river to drown Remy. But Linguini halts and realizes that Remy is the creator of the soup and asks if Remy could help him recreate it. Linguini frees Remy but Remy escapes. However, Remy returns to Linguini, realizing that he can't let him down and that he saved him from drowning. The next day, Remy and Linguini had a hard time overcoming their language barrier, until Remy starts pulling Linguini's hair under his toque Blanche to control his limbs like a marionette. The pair successfully meet the challenges devised by Skinner. Skinner becomes concerned about Linguini's talent and discovers that Linguini is actually Gusteau's son and by Gusteau's will, is the rightful owner of the restaurant; this revelation would ruin Skinner's plans to use Gusteau's name to market a line of microwaveable meals. He calls his lawyer, who confirms that Linguini is Gusteau's son through a hair in the late chef's hat. With Skinner faced with the dilemma of not firing Linguini without it looking suspicious, his lawyer advised that he wait till the deadline on the will is over before doing so. However, Remy discovers the documents and takes them to Linguini, who subsequently fires Skinner and takes control of the restaurant. Linguini and Colette even begin to develop a romantic bond, leaving Remy feeling left out and taken for granted. Remy finds Emile in the restaurant's trash, and Remy is reunited with the pack. Django warns Remy that humans and rats will never get along, but Remy does not believe him. Meanwhile, Remy begrudgingly feeds Emile and his friends by stealing from the kitchen's pantry as the night's pass.

Anton Ego, a food critic whose past review cost Gusteau's one of its star ratings, announces he will review the restaurant again the next day based on its rising success. Linguini, under pressure of Ego's pending arrival, has a falling out with Remy, causing Remy to retaliate by leading a raid on the kitchen's food stocks that night. Linguini catches the rats in the act and chases them all out, including Remy, telling the rat he never wants to see him again. Remy, dejected, is captured by Skinner. In his cage, Remy has one final conversation with his phantom Gusteau, who tells him that the rat never needed his guidance and at that moment, he is freed by Django and Emile. Remy returns to the kitchen, where a frantic Linguini apologizes and asks Remy back to help. Linguini then reveals the truth about Remy to the staff, resulting in a mass walk-out by the heartbroken disbelievers; Colette later returns after recalling Gusteau's motto: "Anyone can cook."

Impressed by his son's determination, Django organizes the rest of the pack to help out in the kitchen. They throw Skinner and a health inspector, bound and gagged, into the freezer when they try to interfere. Linguini uses roller skates to wait on all the tables by himself, while Remy and Colette work together to prepare a variation on ratatouille for Ego. Ego is amazed by the dish, which evokes childhood memories of his mother's cooking, and asks to see the chef. Linguini and Colette wait until all the other customers leave to introduce Remy to Ego. Ego writes a glowing review of the meal the next day, declaring Remy (albeit not by name or species) exemplary of Gusteau's motto, and "nothing less than the finest chef in France."

In the dénouement, Gusteau's is closed down by the health inspector, and Ego loses his job and his credibility as a food critic for praising a restaurant filled with rats. However, he eagerly funds a new restaurant run by Linguini and Colette, featuring dining areas for both humans and rats and a kitchen designed for Remy to continue cooking. The film ends showing a long queue outside and a sign displaying a rat wearing a toque and holding a spoon and below it the name "La Ratatouille."

Voice cast

 * Patton Oswalt as Remy
 * Lou Romano as Linguini
 * Ian Holm as Skinner
 * Janeane Garofalo as Colette
 * Peter O'Toole as Ego
 * Brad Garrett as Gusteau
 * Brian Dennehy as Django
 * Peter Sohn as Emile
 * Will Arnett as Horst
 * Julius Callahan as Lalo and Francois
 * James Remar as Larousse
 * John Ratzenberger as Mustafa
 * Teddy Newton as Talon Labarthe
 * Tony Fucile as Pompidou and Health Inspector
 * Jake Steinfeld as Git
 * Brad Bird as Ambrister Minion

Production
In the classic Pixar tradition, Ratatouille came with its own set of production challenges. Water effects, as usual, were particularly challenging to create. One of the sewer scenes even had more technical complexity than the blue whale segments in Finding Nemo.

Perhaps the most notable challenge facing the Ratatouille production crew was the need for tasty-looking food props. Although previous films like The Incredibles had used food props to a limited extent, the sheer quantity of food necessitated upgrades to the lighting software. Pixar relied heavily on sub-surface scattering for the food props, an effect also used to create visually-appealing human skin.

Critical Response
Ratatouille currently holds a 96% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Box Office Results
According to Box Office Mojo, Ratatouille only made $206.4 million domestically, putting it in the bottom half of all Pixar movies to date. But internationally it made $417.3 million, the second best of the Pixar movies and putting it in fifth place (at $623.7 million) for total box office results, behind Toy Story 3, Finding Nemo, Up and The Incredibles.

Awards
The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, the third for Pixar. It was nominated for another 4 Academy Awards plus received many other awards and nominations.

Rating
The movie was rated G in the United States and U in the UK.

Attached short film
Theatrical and home video releases include Lifted, released in 2006.

Another short film, Your Friend the Rat, is released exclusively on Blu-ray and DVD.