Ratatouille

Daughter and I go see Ratatouille. We’re at the Savoy which certainly isn’t Broadway; this is fidget central and the venue for the 'who can make the most noise with a carton of popcorn competition'. The two girls next to me, both well into their teens, easily out do the five year olds with their eating habits. Far messier than Doggo and Daughter put together. When one of the girls stands up at the end of the film the two rows in front of her are almost swept away in an avalanche of popcorn crumbs.


The film itself is your everyday tale of boy meets rat, becomes world-renowned chef, as you do. The boy, Linguini, inherits the restaurant of the famous Gusteau, whose motto was ‘anyone can cook’ but the boy can't. Luckily for him the rat can.


The boy/rat combination impresses everyone, especially the kitchen's sole female chef, the scary knife wielding Colette, who whisks him away on her motorcycle. Fair enough, you're not going to resist a leather clad leggy French babe astride a motorcycle now are you but this doesn't impress the rat and it nearly all goes pear shaped. Particularly when Peter O'Toole shows up as the restaurant critic from the Grim Eater but the rat and his friends save the day and impress him with the rat’s signature dish of, yep you guessed it, Ratatouille. Although I wouldn't have been terribly impressed if they'd made we wait as long for the food as they did the critic.


The film is entertaining but spoilt by the usual American moralising, don’t steal, don’t do that, don’t do this etc. That apart the film is occasionally funny, occasionally clever, and anything that sees a character voiced by Jamie Oliver getting bound, gagged, and chucked in a storeroom, must have something going for it.