Seriously, is there any question as to whether I liked this movie? Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles) has made some of my absolute favorite movies. It’s about food. It’s Pixar. If you have to ask, still, you really don’t know me.
Still, it’s *astonishing*. The animation and art direction make every other media company look like they’re a trout, flailing around on dry land. Nothing even comes remotely close to the quality and vision of the animation. No offense to my friends at their competition.
What Pixar’s done, to me, is staggering. Their track record (the opening short was awesome) is second to none, their technology is cutting edge, and from all accounts I’ve heard, it’s a great place to work. Blows my mind. I can only aspire to one day be able to make something of such staggering *quality*. ‘Till then, I guess I’ll have to wait for Brad Bird/Pixar’s next movie.
I haven’t seen it yet (a new parent has got to have his priorities), but there was no question to me whether it would be a good movie, just whether it would be a great movie. Cars, I think, was the weakest Pixar movie to date, but it was definitely not a stinker.
That said, I don’t think I can draw a line between “good” and “great”. From Pixar, I know The Incredibles was great, and I think both of the Toy Story movies were as well.
For me, the great Pixar movies were Toy Story, Toy Story 2, The Incredibles, and Ratatouille. The good Pixar movies were Cars, Finding Nemo, A Bug’s Life and Monsters, Inc.
That’s not to say I haven’t liked the “good” movies – even Pixar’s worst is better than almost anyone else’s best – but their great movies are leagues beyond anything anyone else is doing.
To paraphrase rawhide: Ratatouille is Pixar’s weakest movie to date, replacing Cars in that position for me.
The animation/lighting/surfacing/effects of Ratatouille were phenomenal. Their humans still look very plasticy, but they played around that pretty well. The rat animation and fur were nothing short of breathtaking.
The story structure, on the other hand, was mediocre. Without getting into spoilers: the pace was too slow, and many of the story telling devices were just downright lazy. See my blog for a spoilerrific review.
Well, it looks like Seppo and I are in line on the good vs. great distinction. Maybe I won’t think Ratatouille is great, but I have a difficult time believing I’ll find it weaker than Cars.
I’m always worried about the negative effects of high expectations, but I look forward to seeing Ratatouille in any case.
Cars was at the bottom for me, and for some reason, I didn’t find Finding Nemo charming or a movie I cared to watch again. Even the Incredibles, while I called it the best superhero movie I had seen of the year when it came out (and this was before Batman Begins), had its problems for me.
I *LOVED* Ratatouille. It’s funny; about 99.99% of the time, even for movies that I adore, the minute I step out of the theater, I can think of a bunch of things I would want to change or things that didn’t strike the right chord for me.
And even now, I do think the “relationship” wasn’t so great, the main human character wasn’t so great, but man! Over all, I am filled with a happy sense of having enjoyed every minute of the movie. I’ll probably be able to pull out the details later as to why I enjoyed it so much, but for now, I am really happy to have watched it.
And for some reason, the visuals impressed me enough that I actively noticed it several times throughout the movie.
If Pixar has a weakness that bothers me, I think it’s that it has such a strong point of view of being about the boy-who-grows (which is done fantastically), that I want it to tackle equally the point of view of the girl-who-grows.
For me, Ratatouille’s biggest downfall might be that it had the misfortune of being released AFTER I got into the movie business. I now have a whole new arsenal of tools at my fingertips to judge movies (especially the animated type) by. Beware my fingertips!
I liked Ratatouille, and would recommend it to anyone. But they could have, and have, done better, IMO.
And just so to be fair: Shrek the Third was awful, aside from the surfacing and lighting. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.