Oh rats! They’re taking center stage
You wouldn’t think rats, with their reputation as scavengers and
carriers of bubonic plague, would be great stars of Hollywood
films. But they have a pretty strong history as stars in animated
movies and have even taken the stage in some live-action films.
Oh rats! They’re taking center stage
You wouldn’t think rats, with their reputation as scavengers and carriers of bubonic plague, would be great stars of Hollywood films. But they have a pretty strong history as stars in animated movies and have even taken the stage in some live-action films.
Ratatouille
Remy (Patton Oswald) is the star of Disney Pixar’s latest release “Ratatouille.” The film was recently released on DVD. Remy is a rat in France whose job is to detect poison, but his superior sense of taste and smell destines him for greater things. When he is separated from his family, he finds his place at a famous French restaurant. The owner, Gusteau (Brad Garrett), was known for his belief that anyone can cook. Since Gusteau has died, the restaurant has fallen out of favor and his second in command has sold out the Gusteau name to frozen burritos and other goods.
Around the same time as Remy finds his way into the restaurant, Linguini (Lou Romano) is there for a job. He is the son of a former employee who has died and he is offered a position as the garbage boy. When Remy doctors up a pot of boiling soup, Linguini gets the credit and the duo soon learn to work together without anyone knowing.
The movie has its funny moments, but sometimes the faux-French accents are hard to understand. The cool thing about the movie, though, is that some of the voice actors actually worked with real chefs to get a feel for how things work in the kitchen. Last week’s “Dinner Impossible,” a Food Network show, brought together some of the cast and crew to fix a fancy banquet for Pixar staff. The challenge was to make dishes that were reminiscent of the three latest Disney Pixar films. Lou Romano was just as confused in the real kitchen as Linguini was in “Ratatouille.”
Flushed Away
While Remy roams the streets of Paris, the rats in “Flushed Away” have their own city beneath London. Roddy (Hugh Jackman) is a pet rat who lives in a posh home, but gets flushed down the toilet into the sewer. There he meets Rita (Kate Winslet), who is a bit of a rat pirate in the underworld. She searches for treasure and tries to evade The Toad (Ian McKellen), who is after a family jewel. When the two are captured, they escape by stealing a power supply cord that The Toad needs for his evil plot.
The movie is laugh-out-loud funny as Rita tries to help Roddy get home. First they have to fight off less-than-clever rats Whitey (Bill Nighy) and Spike (Andy Serkis,) before The Toad sends out the big guns. Le Frog (Jean Reno) leads a covert group of martial-arts ready frogs who attack Rita and Roddy.
Charlotte’s Web
The first rat I remember seeing in a movie was Templeton from “Charlotte’s Web.” Though the movie came out in 1973, before I was born, my mom bought a copy of the video for us when we were kids. My sister and two cousins who were around her age had a habit of watching their favorite videos until the videos no longer played. I can’t count how many times we watched “Dumbo,” “Robin Hood,” or “Charlotte’s Web.”
Templeton is the gray rat who brings back snippets of newsprint or other papers so Charlotte can weave words into her web so that the farm owners will think Wilbur is a brilliant pig. The farm animals believe it will spare him from the slaughterhouse. One of my cousins loved the movie so much, he named his own pet rat Templeton when an uncle brought it home. Templeton seemed to live forever, though I think he only lived nine years, which is still long in rat years, I think.
We all loved Templeton, with his beady red eyes and white fur. But then anyone who has seen one of these movies knows rats can have their loveable side.
Rat
When it comes to live action movies, the plots tend not to be so sweet. In “Willard” a sociopath can control rats to do his evil bidding. In “Ben” a lonely boy befriends a rat who is the leader of a pack of vicious rats.
While all that might sound strange, one of the strangest movies I’ve seen with a rodent is “Rat,” an Irish film about a man who comes home late from a pub and then turns into a rat. His wife is hardly sympathetic to him – after all he was home late. The movie is funny, and don’t think just because Hubert Flynn (Pete Postlethwaite) is a rat that he isn’t still interested in the occasional pint.
