"Ratatoing" was released in 2007.
In 2007, Brazilian animation studio Video Brinquedo produced the Mockbuster Ratatoing. The movie followed the main rodent, Marcell Toing, and his restaurant Ratatoing. It also featured his employees, Greg, Octavio, Oscar, and Carol. The story shows Marcell and his friends sneaking into human kitchens at night to steal ingredients. They carefully plan their food heist, slipping past dangers and gathering supplies to bring back to their restaurant. At Ratatoing, Marcell and his crew use the stolen food to prepare meals for their fellow rats, making the restaurant a popular spot in the city. Much of the movie repeats this cycle of daring missions and late-night cooking, with the rats always returning home to celebrate their success. However, not every rat is happy about Marcell’s success. A group of jealous rats try to sabotage Ratatoing by springing on Marcell’s missions and attempting to steal the spotlight for themselves. Despite their efforts, they fail to outsmart Marcell and his clever team. Each attempt only proves how much more skilled and resourceful Marcell is, allowing Ratatoing to remain the top restaurant for rats in the city.
These Rats Really Love This Food
In the beginning of the film, roughly ten minutes are spent with the rats dining at the restaurant, going on and on about how ‘delicious’ and ‘fresh’ the food is, along with the great service. Keep in mind, this movie is only around fourty-four minutes long. I am genuinely not exaggerating when I say at least a fourth of the movie is just reminding the audience of how ‘sophisticated’ this restaurant is. Two tables also continuously request to speak with Marcell, though one of those tables consists of the rats from the opposing restaurant. That being said, I cannot stress enough how this section of the film literally gives us nothing about the plot, other than insisting on the quality of Ratatoing, until around eleven minutes in, when the opposing rats try to find out the secret to Ratatoing. It’s almost as if they think we’re going to doubt the quality of the restaurant, which I’m pretty sure nobody would have. In fact, the amount of time spent on the subject might have actually caused me to doubt it, because it gets to the point where I could justifiably be suspicious of the food’s excellency. Call it a donut with the mass level of glaze it receives from these aristo(c)rats.
Let’s Just Do It Again
A notable aspect of this movie that reveals a lot about its quality and Video Brinquedo’s concern with creating a decent movie is the reuse of scenes and repetition throughout the film. Aside from the ongoing chatter about the food and service at Ratatoing, the movie recycles an entire one minute and twenty-five second ‘transformation’ sequence. Twice. Almost 6% of this movie is just this reused transformation. The second use of it isn’t even cut or trimmed down. It is quite literally the same exact scene, down to the detail, full length, all over again. On top of this, a character in the movie, Greg, is known for his catch phrase “Precisely!” throughout the film. He says it eleven times, to be exact. Dipping into the poor voice acting in the movie a bit, this line of his is said the same way each time. The style and audio of it sounds as though they had it saved to a soundboard or something of the sort, and simply used it whenever they just needed to fill in the empty spaces of any dialogue. They essentially try to use these sorts of “tactics” to expand the movie’s length.
What 4 Months Of Effort Gets You
Another big factor in Ratatoing’s quality is the amount of effort that went into making it. The movie was reportedly put together in just about four months, which is shockingly fast for something that’s supposed to be a full-length animated feature. That short timeline really shows in the final product, because instead of feeling like a complete story with variety and depth, the film ends up looking more like something thrown together just to exist. Most of the action takes place in one very closed setting, with rats constantly hanging around the same restaurant interior. While this might have been easier for the animators, it also makes the movie feel repetitive, almost like you’re stuck in the same room for the entire story. There’s little sense of adventure, growth, or movement-the world feels small, boxed-in, and unfinished. The rushed four-month schedule combined with the limited environment gives Ratatouting a kind of flat, claustrophobic quality, like the movie ner really gets the chance to breathe or expand into something more interesting.
Who Even Made This?
Let’s talk about Video Brinquedo, the company who created this mockbuster masterpiece. Vídeo Brinquedo, also known as Toyland Video in english, is a brazilian animation studio. Upon further research into this company, I have learned three things: they aren’t (and probably never have been) concerned with the quality of their projects, only care about making quick money, and exist almost exclusively to copy. Vídeo Brinquedo’s films were never even meant to be good. Like, they seriously could care less about it as long as they make a quick buck. Their movies are cheap copies, loosely based off of already existing films, with maybe 0.067% of the budget and bare minimum effort. Ratatoing itself was literally conjured up in 4 months. Its purpose was specifically to draw in the audience of those who enjoyed the hit movie, Ratatouille, by making it seem similar. They’ve done this with many ideas and films. Some include: “The Little Cars”, a 5 part movie series made to replicate Pixar’s “Cars”, “Little Bee”, copy of “The Bee Movie”, “Tiny Robots”, a replica of “WALL-E”, “Gladiformers”, evil twin of ‘Transformers”, “What’s Up: Balloon to the Rescue”, copycat of “Up”, and many more. Video Brinquedo actually faced a lot of negative feedback for “What’s Up” due to making a character based on obvious racist Chinese stereotypes. It ended up getting removed from Toronto Public Library, and getting voted the worst animated film of the 2000’s on Letterboxd. Not a great look.
Ratatouille vs. Ratatoing
As we can see this movie was very much compared to Ratatouille due to their similarity of their names and the same concept of a rat cooking. But honestly, the two are super different. Ratatouille has amazing animation, a creative story, and characters like Remy and Linguini that people actually connect with, while Ratatoing kind of feels like a cheap knock-off where the rats just sneak into a restaurant to steal food. To put things in perspective, Ratatoing’s budget was only about 0.067% of Ratatouille’s $150 million budget, which explains a lot of the difference in quality and polish. Pixar’s movie went on to win awards and became a classic that people still talk about today, while Ratatoing is mostly remembered because of how funny and low-quality it is. A lot of people online even react to the movie and joke around about how it tried to copy pixar but ended up looking more like a parody. Even though both movies give us rats in the kitchen, only Ratatouille made the idea feel “Magical”, while Ratatoing is more of a movie people laugh at rather than taking it seriously.
What Did I Think?
Now, all this to say, I actually love this movie. Yes, the quality is horrible. Yes, the plot is mediocre. Yes, barely anything happens. However, I am the type of person who enjoys a movie that is just so unapologetically terrible. If you’re also that kind of person, you’d probably love it too. While the scenes are long and irrelevant, there are a lot of aspects that are really humorous. Many of the long drawn out scenes made me laugh due to how ridiculous they were to watch, and even though it’s a cheap copy, it does technically have a lot of originality. It’s nowhere close to Ratatouille in any aspect but the concept of rats cooking. Overall, it’s actually really funny without meaning to be. Though, I will say that if you get annoyed by slow pacing in movies or things like that, this most likely isn’t the movie for you since that’s almost all Ratatoing is. Truthfully speaking, if you aren’t a lover of trash (similar to the rodents this film is about), you’re almost guaranteed to hate this. Personally speaking, this is my favorite cup of tea to indulge in, and I’m sipping. In conclusion, I definitely recommend checking this out, or even a review/commentary video about it if you’re interested.