Although the popularity of CGI animated films leveled off somewhat in 2007 thanks to a surfeit of releases, they remain extremely potent at the box office where they have employed several different strategies to enlarge their audiences beyond the normal youthful demographic that enjoys cartoons. Some films such as the hugely popular Shrek trilogy and the newly released Bee Movie manage to keep adults entertained with quick witted dialogue filled with knowing pop culture references that sail over the kiddies' heads but hit the mark with more mature audiences. Pixar has taken a different, more organic strategy in its feature films with a concerted effort to create innovative stories and characters that are so compelling that both kids and adults will gladly immerse themselves in the movie's narrative flow.
With Ratatouille, which has just been released on DVD ($29.98), Pixar has created an ode to the pleasures of fine food that, in spite of its brilliant, inventive visuals, strong characterizations, and narrative drive, didn't connect with American audiences as effectively as its Pixar predecessor Cars, which earned $244 million at the domestic box office compared with just $205 million for Ratatouille. Still the sophisticated Ratatouille continues to perform extremely well overseas where it has already earned $348 million compared with just $217 million for Cars -- and Ratatouille is the sort of richly inventive classic (like Disney's Pinocchio) that should do extremely well on DVD and be a strong catalog seller for years to come.
In Ratatouille director Brad Bird, who also helmed the heartfelt classic The Iron Giant and the hugely successful The Incredibles, manages to overcome our normal human revulsion at the thought of rats in the kitchen with a saga that celebrates talent no matter how humble (and unlikely) its origins. The movie's central dish not only provides a delicious pun, it reinforces the film's basically egalitarian message by positing that a simple peasant stew prepared from fresh ingredients picked at the peak of their flavor-producing ripeness and exquisitely seasoned can outshine the most expensive truffle-encrusted, caviar-infused, goose liver-distending example of haute cuisine -- to translate for Americans by putting it in terms of desserts -- it is like saying that the perfect piece of apple pie with its interplay of the tartness of Duchess apples, the brio of cinnamon, and the sweetness of sugar surrounded by a light and flaky crust can easily eclipse the overwrought 'death by chocolate' concoctions that were so prevalent on the menus of trendy restaurants in the 1990s.
In addition to its simple, but profound, message about the pleasures of eating and the joys of creation when alimentation is raised to the level of art, Ratatouille provides plenty of action and bountiful humor as well as finely drawn characters -- all played out against the most superbly rendered backgrounds of any American animated film since Pinocchio. The scintillating DVD transfer does full justice to the movie's astounding visuals and the DVD contains a wealth of extras including deleted scenes, a new animated short featuring the film's protagonist Remy and a fascinating behind-the-scenes feature about the food 'created' for the film.
While Ratatouille, because of its popularity, will be heavily discounted in the mass market, a companion volume, The Pixar Short Films Collection ($29.98) is less likely to receive the loss leader treatment, and perhaps even more likely to appeal to hardcore animation fan. Although many of these shorts have been included on previous Pixar releases several of them are new to DVD. Together these 13 shorts provide a superb chronicle of the technical development of computer animation and the narrative development of Pixar. Seven of these shorts have received Academy Award nominations and two of them ('Geri's Game' and 'For the Birds') won the Oscar. Once again the DVD transfer is superb and the behind-the-scenes feature 'The Pixar Shorts: A Short History' is almost worth the price of admission by itself. It's great to have these innovative short films on one disc -- and like the films of
