"Sorry Fugu": If the River Was Ratatouille
TAARG noticed that the food critic/Alan Rickman character in Pixar's Ratatouille (played by Peter O'Toole) recalled the food critic in T.C. Boyle's short story "Sorry Fugu" from a 1989 collection.In the movie, the merciless critic Anton Ego caves in to a simple peasant dish that he remembers from his childhood. In the short story, the critic's boyfriend is kept at bay with burned steak and peas, "shanty Irish" food his mother used to make.
The critics in both stories find it easier to dismiss things than embrace them.
"To like something," Boyle's critic says, "to really like it and come out and say so, is taking a terrible risk. I mean, what if I'm wrong? What if it's really no good?"
Ratatouille's critic says, "But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new."
This was the first movie the three of us attended at a theatre, and our 2.5-year-old took the movie like a champ while other kids around her shrieked and kicked their chairs. Ours was the child that made single people and childless couples want to have children, and both TAARG and I had to fend off proposals to create children.
"No, really," TAARG said. "I'm already pregnant."
"Sure, when?" I said. "I've got a 3:00 and a 3:15 available."
Ratatouille's animation was brilliant but the story required a little too much of the audience. It wasn't a matter of giving the audience too much credit, it was a matter of not knowing when to stop teaching us about individualism and following one's dreams and listening to one's heart. There were too many ingredients in the stew.
And the density in one area was a deficit in another. While it's not very interesting that "anyone can cook", we would like to know how the human protagonist suddenly is an expert rollerblader and customer service representative when before he couldn't ride a bike or keep a job. The story needed simpling up, but visually it was rich, and the ending was very satisfying.
See also: Buy T.C. Boyle's "If the River Was Whiskey"
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by Marty Barrett at Monday, July 09, 2007
1 Comments:
We saw the movie last week too as a trio. Aimee has always been good at movies, but as of yet, we have had no offers for further procreation. Racism!
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