(Writer's note: This was supposed to be up last Friday but a buggy server kept it from getting published)
I'm not sure about audiences, but the animation community is breathlessly waiting for Ratatouille, the next flick from the gang at Pixar. So here is the latest roundup of all things Ratatouille-related.
Jim Hill Media talks about how Disney is trying to downplay the buzz around this flick, so that they don’t end up with egg on their faces if it bombs. It’s not surprising that the Mouse House is doing this: Ratatouille is an original flick in a summer loaded with high-profile sequels, and Transformers and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix hit theatres soon after Ratatouille’s debut. That kind of timing has gotta make Disney suits nervous.
They’re already calling Ratatouille “the little film with the great, big heart,” making it the under . . . rat in this summer’s line-up. And there are even more ominous signs.
"You know that Ratatouille isn't really a Brad Bird movie, right?” an anonymous flak told Jim Hill. “That Brad just did what he could with a Jan Pinkava film that was already going down in flames. But because (Ratatouille’s) settings had already been chosen and the characters had already been designed, this wasn't so much a movie as it was a rescue mission. And given that Ratatouille still had to be ready to roll into theaters in just 18 months time, there was only so much that Brad could do."
Pretty stunning for a flick that’s already getting some pretty hot reviews. But keep in mind that great reviews don’t mean great box office: Fantasia, arguably Disney’s greatest animated movie, bombed on its initial release. And Bird's first flick, The Iron Giant, got hammered at the box office, thanks to a lousy promo from Warner Bros.
Jim Hill’s belief is that Disney thinks a movie about a rat that aspires to be a chef, a flick that doesn’t feature massive car chases or explosions, will get lost in the summer shuffle. It is possible, but Ratatouille has the Pixar name behind it, which means that many people will check it out for that reason alone.
My feeling is the Mouse House, by trying to cool the buzz on this flick, wants to eat its cake and have it too. If Ratatouille gets flattened, Disney’s flaks can shrug and say, “What did you expect?” Or, if it starts busting blocks, they can bring out the David and Goliath comparisons.
It's interesting to note that DreamWorks Animation’s Jeffrey Katzenberg did the exact same thing when he was doing the rounds for Shrek the Third.
"I hope we have a very, very good weekend, but I don't expect us to set any records," he told Reuters on May 17th, just before Shrek the Third's opening.
Of course, when Shrek the Third did make $121.6 million in its first weekend (exactly as it was expected to do), Katzenberg and Company crowed about it to anyone who would listen, trying to make the flick’s feat even more impressive. Look for Disney to do the exact same thing if Ratatouille’s numbers do what they’re supposed to.
In happier news, Movieweb has yet another making-of featurette, this time concerning character creation in Ratatouille.
“I think this movie fits in with the other Pixar movies in that it is character-based, first and foremost,” says Bird.
The Pixar gang brought in “real rats that were realistic” to study them, and figure out how to animate them properly. One of the biggest issues was how to make a rat cute and cuddly: as you may have already noticed, Pixar enlarged their eyes and put the forepaws as high up as possible to enhance the AQ (Adorable Quotient).
Of course, Pixar had to make their humans look better as well.
“Back on (The Incredibles) we had the universal human,” observed character supervisor Brian Green. “We wanted to do even better than that.” That meant making the human characters even more detailed than in previous Pixar efforts. You can check out this featurette by clicking here.
Upcoming Pixar managed to score the first Ratatouille TV spot. There’s nothing you haven’t seen in any other trailers, but still worth a mention. You can see it by clicking here.
Finally, Disney Insider has interviews with both Patton Oswalt (Remy) and Lou Romano (Linguini), the latest odd couple in the Disney stable. Remy is the lead: the rat who wants to become a chef, while Linguini is the hapless garbage boy who becomes Remy’s avatar in the kitchen.
Both Oswalt and Romano make a big deal about how, unlike their onscreen counterparts, they’ve never met. The fact that each actor recorded his voice track separately may seem stunning until you learn that this is standard practice in every animation studio. Sigh.
There’s the obligatory sucking up to both Pixar and Bird from Patton. He even compares working with Bird and Pixar to jamming with a jazz legend.
“It's like playing in your high-school band, then suddenly you're with the Miles Davis Trio at Minton's,” he says. “In (Bird’s) mind, he has the whole script plus everyone else's performances, the exact intention of every scene – he's a genius. He's just a genius! I don't use that world lightly, but he truly is. There's no one else like him."
However, there are some cool tidbits among the fluff, such as how Romano got the gig voicing Linguini. Romano’s a veteran Pixar artist, who was a visual development artist on The Iron Giant and the production designer of The Incredibles.
"I was working on The Incredibles at the time (Romano also had a small voice role as Dash’s put-upon teacher in that movie), and early on in the Ratatouille production process they were cutting their first reels,” he explains. “They asked me to come in and read for Linguini, I think partly because they were basing the character on me a little bit – just physically. So they thought they'd have me try to do the voice work as a scratch track."
Much like Bird did when he chose himself to voice The Incredibles’ Edna Mode, Romano’s scratch tracks ended up being the final product. You can check out the interview in its entirety over here.
Ratatouille opens June 29th. Look for a review in this space.
Fun Fact: Brad Bird incorporates his classroom number at CalArts, ‘A113,’ in every movie he’s involved in.
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