Fifth Anniversary Review: Ratatouille (2007)

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The very first review I wrote for this blog was the 2009 animated masterpiece The Secret of Kells, a gorgeous blend of Irish art, fantasy, and history which, incidentally, centers around the growth of a young artist. So what better way to mark this blog’s fifth anniversary than to look at another animated classic that masterfully expands on the themes of creativity, the nature of the artist, their work, and how public perception and greed thwarts the new and experimental?

Oh, and it’s also the first Pixar movie I’m reviewing because somehow I never got around to one in the past five years (so-so holiday specials notwithstanding).

You know, animation directors rarely get the recognition they deserve. A ton of work goes into creating each scene, each character, each frame from scratch, and it’s not surprising that two or more people usually have to share the responsibility of getting the movie out on time. Only a select few animation directors have risen to some prominence outside of their community, but not quite to the level of their live-action peers – with perhaps one exception.

Brad Bird, maybe you’ve heard of him: The Incredibles, The Iron Giant, helped kick off The Simpsons; he even made the jump to live-action and made some pretty good stuff in that medium too. I specifically say medium because, as he so rightfully stated, animation, like live-action, is a medium, a method used to produce artwork, not a genre. There is a distinct difference that studios and the public tend to ignore because of the stigma that animation is meant for children. Animation is a means to tell stories through, not a boxed-in category to dump kids’ movies into.

You’d think Bird’s passion and dedication to crafting mature stories for both adults and children would have made him a shoo-in to direct Ratatouille, especially after his Oscar win for The Incredibles. That wasn’t the case, however. Long-time animator and storyboarder Jan Pinkava got the ball rolling, but was replaced when the the film hit story troubles. Anyone who’s kept an eye on Pixar’s output will undoubtedly note that whenever a director is switched out during production (Brave, The Good Dinosaur, and depending on your POV, Toy Story 4), the resulting features wind up being, well, let’s call them a mixed bag. But in this case, bringing Bird onboard was nothing short of a godsend for Ratatouille. The film may have started as Pinkava’s brainchild, but it was Bird who really got what the story was about. His drastic changes, from redesigning the rats to be less anthropomorphic to even killing off one of the central characters, reinvented the film from the ground up, and got him his second Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

I’m happy to say that at the time this review is being wrapped up, Ratatouille is undergoing something of a critical re-evaluation and renaissance; yes, it was a big hit on release, but there was a long period of time where, despite its overwhelming success, it was something that Pixar itself seemed to have forgotten about. There were no plans for a sequel (unless you count the uproarious short “Your Friend, The Rat”), no TV series, no high demand for a consumer product line, little to no character presence in any of the Disney parks, and it wouldn’t receive a proper ride until 2014; even then, it was added to Disneyland Paris (a clone was set to open in Epcot’s World Showcase last year though it was delayed due to 2020 being…2020). For whatever reason, nobody was interested in talking about it or utilizing its potential like most of Pixar’s other films. That apparently changed as of last year; Maybe the movie gave people that comfort food for the soul they craved during quarantine, or the Kingdom Hearts 3 minigames centering around Remy controlling Sora reminded them how fun it was, or maybe it was the Ratatouille musical meme on TikTok that became so popular that they turned it into an actual musical. But I have to ask, why? Why did Ratatouille fall off the radar for so many in the first place? Well, after poking my nose in a few places, the main consensus I got from people who didn’t believe it rose up to Pixar’s lofty standards was because they considered it “boring”.

Now I try to respect most other’s opinions when it comes to animated movies, but…boring?

Is fast-paced, expressive computer animation that still holds up with what Pixar puts out today boring?

Are colorful, relatable characters in a vibrant reimagining of the City of Lights boring?

Is an original story that shows how creativity can apply to an unlikely field and an even more unlikely creator boring?

Is one of the most iconic actors of the twentieth century delivering the greatest speech about criticism and its relationship to art boring?

If your answer is no, then you’ve come to the right review blog.

January Review: Fantasia 2000

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Last year I talked about Fantasia, which is not just one of my favorite Disney movies, but one of my favorite movies in general. And if I may be self-indulgent for a moment, it’s also one of the reviews that I’m the proudest of. Fantasia is a visual, emotional masterpiece that marries music and art in a manner few cinematic ventures have come close to replicating. One question that remains is what my thoughts on the long-gestated sequel is –

…you might wanna get yourselves some snacks first.

As anyone who read my review on the previous film knows, Fantasia was a project ahead of its time. Critics and audiences turned their noses up at it for conflicting reasons, and the film didn’t even make it’s budget back until twenty-something years later when they began marketing it to a very different crowd.

“I don’t wanna alarm you dude, but I took in some Fantasia and these mushrooms started dancing, and then there were dinosaurs everywhere and then they all died, but then these demons were flying around my head and I was like WOOOOOAAAHHH!!”

“Yeah, Fantasia is one crazy movie, man.”

“Movie?”

Fantasia’s unfortunate box office failure put the kibosh on Walt Disney’s plans to make it a recurring series with new animated shorts made to play alongside handpicked favorites. The closest he came to following through on his vision was Make Mine Music and Melody Time, package features of shorts that drew from modern music more than classical pieces.

Fast-forward nearly fifty years later to the golden age known as the Disney Renaissance: Walt’s nephew Roy E. Disney surveys the new crop of animators, storytellers, and artists who are creating hit after hit and have brought the studio back to his uncle’s glory days, and thinks to himself, “Maybe now we can make Uncle Walt’s dream come true.” He made a good case for it, but not everyone was on board. Jeffrey Katzenberg loathed the idea, partly because he felt the original Fantasia was a tough act to follow (not an entirely unreasonable doubt) but most likely due to the fact that the last time Disney made a sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, it drastically underperformed (even though the reasons for that are entirely Katzenberg’s fault. Seriously, watch Waking Sleeping Beauty and tell me you don’t want to punch him in the nose when Mike Gabriel recalls his opening weekend phone call).

Once Katzenberg was out of the picture, though, Fantasia 2000, then saddled with the less dated but duller moniker Fantasia Continued, got the go-ahead. Many of the sequences were made simultaneously as the animated features my generation most fondly remembers, others were created to be standalone shorts before they were brought into the fold. Since it was ready in time for the new millennium, it not only got a name change but a massive marketing campaign around the fact that it would be played on IMAX screens for a limited run, the very first Disney feature to do so. As a young Fantasia fan who had never been to one of those enormous theaters before, I begged and pleaded my parents to take me. Late that January, we traveled over to the IMAX theater at Lincoln Center, the only one nearest to us since they weren’t so widespread as they are now, and what an experience it was. I can still recall the feeling of awe at the climax of Pines of Rome, whispering eagerly with my mom at how the beginning of Rhapsody in Blue looked like a giant Etch-A-Sketch, and jumping twenty feet in the air when the Firebird’s massive eyes popped open. But did later viewings recapture that magic, or did that first time merely color my perception?

Rankin-Bass Month: The Little Drummer Boy (Review)

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The Little Drummer Boy began as a Christmas carol written under the title “Carol of the Drum” and was first recorded in 1951 by the Von Trapp Family Singers. Maybe you’ve heard of ’em. It was inspired by a long-lost Czech carol, and the French legend of a poor juggler who performs for a statue of the Virgin Mary. The idea of a performer humbly offering their own talents as a gift to a holy figure has been revised and retold in many ways throughout the years (the Tomie De Paola book The Clown Of God is a beautiful example), and has resonated so much in its current form that it’s brought together singers as diverse as Bing Crosby and David Bowie.

I’m willing to bet the song’s popularity is what attracted Rankin-Bass to it, but it still strikes me as an unusual choice for their first stop-motion special made following Rudolph. The R-B roster mainly consists of secular Christmas stories. Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town and Cricket On The Hearth barely touched on the Nativity in their tales. Little Drummer Boy, though? He doesn’t give a figgy pudding for Santa and wholly embraces the biblical side of Christmas. It’s only one of a handful Rankin-Bass specials that do – which means it’s buried beneath the more popular non-Jesusy Rudolph and Frosty outings. Heck, just look at the cover for Little Drummer Boy. Compare the covers for the other Rankin-Bass specials which advertise its celebrity narrator, or that they’re based on some “classic” story by a beloved author. There are TWO Academy-Award winning actors in the cast of Little Drummer Boy, and it’s partly based on what millions of people consider a true story, but instead of playing on that, there’s a cute tagline. Now I may be a tad prejudiced, but I find this to deliberate slighting of this particular Rankin-Bass special a bit unfair. Allow me to elucidate:

Rankin-Bass Month: Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (Review)

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Ah, back to stop-motion animation. After dealing with Frosty’s nonsense I’m unsure as to whether or not I missed it.

Like most iconic fictional characters, Santa’s been the subject of many origin stories. My personal favorite is The Autobiography of Santa Claus by Jeff Guinn, which combines his saintly origins with interesting tidbits about his modern portrayal and a ton of fun historical fiction (he’s helped shape events like Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, and instead of elves he has a boatload of historical figures gain immortality to help him including Leonardo Da Vinci, Theodore Roosevelt and Attila The freaking Hun! It had me at hello!) Of course, Rankin-Bass had to do their own spin on the Santa mythos (not for the last time either as one of their final specials was based on L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus) and they did it by combining it with their tried-and-true method of basing it off a holiday standard.

January Review: Pinocchio (1940)

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“When You Wish Upon A Star
Makes No Difference Who You Are
Anything Your Heart Desires
Will Come To You…”

In my last review, I compared Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to Star Wars; a blockbuster that captivated audiences, revolutionized filmmaking, and was an all-around fun adventure with a likable cast. Well if Snow White is Disney’s Star Wars – before Disney owned Lucasfilm, I mean – then Pinocchio is undoubtedly Disney’s Empire Strikes Back: refined visuals, more complex storytelling and characters, and much, MUCH darker.

The success of Snow White marked the beginning of big things for Disney animation. The sizable influx of cash meant Walt could build a bigger studio, hire more staff, and give his projects a noticeably larger budget. The question is, where to go from here? What movie could possibly follow the fairest one of all? Investors were clamoring for a sequel and the idea was toyed with for a time, but Walt was not a one-trick pony. Then animator Norm Ferguson brought a copy of Carlo Collodi’s Le avventuri di Pinocchio to Walt’s attention. Walt and a few of his key guys had attended a performance of Yasha Frank’s successful staging of Pinocchio prior to Snow White’s release and noted the story had possibilities for adaptation – plenty of spectacle, cute comic relief critters, etc. Seeing that book sparked Walt’s memory; after reading it, he intended to make Pinocchio his third animated venture behind the upcoming Bambi. But when that movie ran into production troubles, Pinocchio was bumped up to its place. Does it measure up to Snow White, though? Let’s find out.

August Review: An American Tail (1986)

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“Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight
Someone’s thinking of me, and loving me tonight…”

Chances are if you were to name a well-known American animation auteur besides Walt Disney, most of us who were children in the 80’s and 90’s will point to one man: Don Bluth.

Bluth formed his studio in the hopes that he could make quality entertainment unlike what Disney was putting out; the irony is that not only did Bluth use to work for Disney up through the seventies, but his career almost mirrors much of Walt and his studio’s ups and downs. Their early films are considered their best despite the common criticism that they’re too dark for children, and over time they grew lighter and softer to the point where they were criticized for, ironically, not being dark enough. That, and they made a few princess fairytale movies in the 90’s with their fair share of Oscar-bait ballads.

There’s also one other factor in this comparison which I think is important. For years after the premiere of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”, every animated movie Walt Disney produced was inevitably compared to it. There was a period where Walt himself began to loathe Snow White because she seemed to overshadow all his other accomplishments. I have to wonder if Don Bluth feels the same way about his first foray into feature-length animation, 1982’s “The Secret of NIMH”, which many consider to be his best work. Admittedly I’m in that boat too, yet I feel guilty for saying it because doing so feels as though I’m negating everything that followed. Case in point – this month’s review.

“An American Tail” is one of the first Don Bluth movies I can remember seeing, and if it weren’t for “The Secret of NIMH” it’d be my number one favorite Bluth film. But hey, it comes this close. Funny thing is, I didn’t watch it all that much when I was kid, and not entirely for the reasons you might think. Sure, this movie has everything that comes with an 80’s Don Bluth production – heavy doses of nightmare fuel and a somewhat bleak atmosphere offset by cartoony animation, lighthearted songs, recurring comic relief actors and a happy ending – but it was on another one of those tapes that had more than one feature crammed on to it. In this case, An American Tail came on right after Ferngully: The Last Rainforest. Four year-old me liked Ferngully just fine, but was never invested enough that she’d watch it all the way through to the end, usually stopping after the romantic “Dream Worth Keeping” segment because afterwards things got dark and moody and there weren’t any more songs. And if I did sit through it all, then I’d have to be in the right kind of mood to watch An American Tail because that was dark and moody and THOSE GDAMN CLOSE CALLS WHERE HE COULD HAVE FOUND HIS FAMILY IF HE ONLY –

…anyway, I’ve come to appreciate it much more for what it is an adult than as a kid for a number of reasons. That nostalgia is still there, but it’s well-tempered by time and a deeper understanding of the socio-economic background behind the making of this movie as well as the historical fictional one where the story is set.

Oh, did I mention I’m highly educated in happenings from the time period this all takes place in? Because I am. And this entire review is going to be part-silly observational jokes and part-gushing over how much history they cram into the tiniest details.

September Review: Zootopia (2016)

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(DISCLAIMER: This blog is not for profit. All images and footage used below are property of their respective companies unless stated otherwise. I do not claim ownership of this material.)

“Tell me if this sounds familiar – naive little kid with good grades and big ideals says ‘Hey look at me, I’m gonna move to Zootopia where predators and prey live in harmony and sing Kumbaya!’…Only to find, whoopsie! We don’t all get along.”

-Nick Wilde, stating the film’s premise in a nutshell

Sigh…

Have you ever had an idea for something, something you knew was right up your alley, that you could pull off spectacularly without having to rely on anyone else’s words or opinions or worry about stealing someone else’s punchlines, only to have someone with more experience and followers not only beat you to it but do it in such a way that YOU look like the copycat?

Because I did.

When I announced that I’d be going on hiatus until September and returning with a surprise movie of my own choosing, I already had a movie in mind – Disney’s latest animated hit Zootopia.

Then a short time later, Unshaved Mouse announced he would be going on hiatus and returning with Zootopia (or Zootropolis as it’s called in some countries). I’ve mentioned before he’s one of my influences, but it’s especially hard to review Disney movies because I’ve noticed we have similar tastes and opinions when it comes to them (Beauty and the Beast, Peter Pan and Chicken Little notwithstanding), and, I have to admit, Zootopia is just another one he wrote long before I could, and even better than me at that.

Yeah I’m a bit miffed that someone beat me to the punch, but there’s plenty of things to talk about when it comes to Zootopia that can’t be covered in one review, and that’s a GOOD thing! This movie should be talked about, not just by fans or Disney lovers or even furries, but people in general. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Disney openly address issues that are alarmingly relevant today in any of their films (Hunchback came close, but it wasn’t the central focus). In a climate where racism, homophobia, and misogyny is out in the open, even in my country which prides itself on being the land of the free and home of the brave, Zootopia is a film that needed to be made. It’d be easy to write it off as a cute talking animal movie (hell, the first few trailers made it look like something shipped out of Dreamworks), but because it uses the animal society as an allegory, it works wonders. This was a movie a long time in the making and it shows; not only is the storytelling tight but Disney’s long climb to make good CGI-animated films pays off in spades. The animation’s elastic and cartoony when it needs to be while staying true to each animal’s anatomy, and the designs combine the big-eyed softness of the 90’s with the aesthetics of movies like The Jungle Book and Robin Hood.

But don’t take my word for it…even though I’m the one writing the review so it is my word. How good is Zootopia?

The movie opens on a surprisingly dark note with scary music and a darkened jungle. A cute little rabbit hops through the undergrowth, unaware that it is being stalked by a savage predator just out of sight. The predator attacks in a frenzy of blood and gore!

Damn, this movie EARNS its PG rating!

No, it’s just a school play put on by a group of young animals, one that exposits the story of the world we’re in, Zootopia – over time, animals evolved from savage predator and meek prey to overcome their biological urges and live in harmony. As someone who’s watched and been in a lot of these kinds of pageants, they get the awkward acting and scene changes down perfectly. Also, providing the background music, we have the unsung hero of the movie.

Behold, the humble beginnings of Keyboard Cat.

The rabbit, Judy Hopps, tells the audience that in Zootopia, animals are free to be what they want to, and reveals that she wants to be the first bunny cop. After the show her parents (Bonnie Hunt and Don Lake) try to discourage her dreams in a way that’s both heartbreakingly honest and yet comically brutal. While they prattle on about the joys of complacency, Judy notices some of her friends’ fair tickets being stolen by local bully Gideon Gray, a Southern-accented fox with a big ego and violent streak who…

Hang on a second!

We’ll get to YOU later, you demented little munchkin.

Judy tries to stand up to Gideon but he mocks her because he’s a predator and the urge to kill is still in his DNA, while she’s just a dumb cowardly bunny. It gets surprisingly intense as he knocks her to the ground and scratches her face. He snarls at her to remember this moment when she thinks she can be anything other than what she is. Now when I heard that the first few minutes of the film would be scary for younger kids, I thought that there would be some kind of horrific accident or traumatizing death along the lines of, you know, the usual parental loss that spurs a number of Disney animated movies. I did not expect this one bit. I may have mentioned once or twice that I was bullied as a kid –

“I’ll go put Dr. Angela on standby.”

Will you get out of here?!

Anyway, though my experiences were more psychological and verbal than physical, they still run pretty deep when invoked, and this scene captures the intensity and fear of when you’re humiliated and put down at the hands of someone stronger than you.

Judy’s determination does not go unrewarded, however. She swiped the tickets from Gideon while he was monologuing and tells her friends that he was right about one thing  – she doesn’t know when to quit.

“Just ask my third grade teacher!”

“She never knew when to quit.”

Cut to an adult Judy (Ginnifer Goodwin) attending police academy and having more than a hard time working with a regimen fit for larger and more brutal animals. Through sheer willpower, the use of her own size and agility against her bigger opponents and one Mulan-worthy training montage, she graduates the top of her class. At the ceremony overseen by Mayor Lionheart (JK Simmons), we learn that Judy’s induction was part of a “mammal inclusion initiative”, not unlike Affirmative-Action programs we have in the states. Assistant Mayor Bellweather (Jenny Slate) gives her her badge and comments on how “it’s a great day for us little guys” before Lionheart pushes her away for a photo op.

“Bad guy! Bad guy! She’s the bad guy!”

Oh come on Cynicism, just because Disney did the whole third-act bad guy switcheroo for its past three movies doesn’t mean they’ll do it a fourth time. In a movie that’s as progressive as Zootopia,they wouldn’t be that repetitive, right?

“I don’t know, you’re the one who’s practicing screenwriting in between five-hour periods of Sort the Court. You should know how these things work by now.”

Anyway, Judy bids her family a fond farewell at the train where they act as all concerned parents do when their kids go off to the city and…give her a taser to keep foxes at bay. They remind her of the incident with Gideon when she was a kid, but Judy tells them that Gideon was a jerk who happened to be a fox, and she knows plenty of bunnies that are jerks (sound familiar?). Judy mollifies them by taking some fox pepper spray (seriously, I know there’s racism against other species – specism? – but who the hell gives the right to make products intended to cause harm to one particular animal in this kind of world?!) and she hops on the train that takes her out of the Bunny Boroughs to the heart of Zootopia. And what follows…my God.