Ratatoing
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| ♥ | This article is dedicated to the Brazilian Portuguese voice actress of Carol, Elisa Villon (October 17, 1963 - January 8, 2019). May she rest in peace. |
| This article was copied (instead of imported) from Awful Movies Wiki on the Wayback Machine. |
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 Why spawn a mockbuster film that rips off Disney/Pixar's Ratatouille? PRECISELY!
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Ratatoing (pronounced rat-a-towing; not rat-a-to-ing) is a 2007 Brazilian animated mockbuster film made by Vídeo Brinquedo.
Plot
In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (unlike Disney and Pixar's Ratatouille, which took place in Paris, France) Marcel Toing's restaurant Ratatoing is very well-regarded among the customers who eat there. Marcel Toing must go on missions to steal ingredients from human restaurants to keep his meals the best. But when a gang of evil rats try to steal his recipes, Marcel and his friends try to drive his rivals out of business by sending them to a laboratory where they'll be experimented on by the scientists working there.
Why This Movie Tastes PRECISELY Awful!
- It is a clear copy of Disney and Pixar's Ratatouille, which debuted in the same year.
- The title itself seems to be a knockoff of that film. It appears as though the movie's creators were unable to properly pronounce 'Ratatouille' or devise an original title.
- On a note that one of the US promos said it was "Inspired by Disney's upcoming summer hit, Ratatouille!" when it is NOT as a Disney/Pixar rip-off, which just shows how utterly shameless Vídeo Brinquedo is with this film's blatant plagiarism of Ratatouille.[1]
- Heck, an obscure Chinese DVD cover uses a very similar cover to Ratatouille's.[2]
- Atrocious CGI animation along with Vídeo Brinquedo's other films, especially with the mouth movements and walk cycles. However, the biggest, most laughable offender comes in the form of a scene where a cat chases after them and walks on two legs while waving its arms around as though it were on fire.
- The CGI animation heavily falls short of 2007 standards, looking more like a poorly animated video game from the late '90s to early 2000s or a college student's initial foray into animation.
- For an animated film themed around cooking, the CGI food served at Ratatoing are incredibly nauseating and unappetizing to look at, not helping is the fact that they're often colored in dull and ugly brownish or dark greenish colors all the time.
- There are even some animation errors.
- In two scenes, Carol, the pink rat, is sliding across the screen and winking at each other while walking.
- Sometimes, whenever rat characters speak, their noses appear to sporadically move upwards.
- There are some occasions where certain characters in the background and foreground don't seem to be animated, and as a result, appear frozen stiff.
- During the suit-up montage, Greg, the green rat, is seen putting on a beanie hat, even though in a couple of shots earlier, he was already wearing it.
- During the establishing shot of Rio De Janeiro at the beginning of the movie, the sky sinks below the horizon line.
- The unnamed brown-haired female rat's notebook does not have a skin at the back.
- In one scene, Marcel's hand clips through the pole used to stir the contents in his cooking cauldron.
- In one shot during the scene where the villains wreak havoc in the human restaurant, Oscar, the gray rat with glasses is way out of scale.
- Some characters have really awkward walk cycles, especially Carol every time she walks in a rather sexy and provocative manner.
- Cacophonic background music.
- Terrible lip-syncing. This isn't the result of it originally being produced in a different language. The original Brazilian version has the same issue.
- Most of the CGI models are recycled to make for minor characters.
- Annoying voice acting, especially from the unnamed elderly rats at the beginning of the movie, and except for some actors in the English dub (see below). Even the narrator has effort into it too.
- Awful dialogue, especially the opening narration, which overuses the word "city". This is due to the fact they translated the dialogue directly from Portuguese resulting in errors.
- The English dub makes the original Brazilian Portuguese version even worse due to inserting random and very loud noises in almost every scene that was originally meant to be silent, including the infamous villains' dance scene, but more on that later.
- During the suit-up montage, in a vein similar to that of Little Princess School, if you listen closely to the background sounds in the English dub, you could literally hear sexual noises in the background as the characters' grunting noises, which is highly inappropriate for a family movie. Yes, really.
- The film's attempts at humor don't work and instead come off as flat and unfunny, notably the 'fly in sauce' scene and even the infamous 'ceiling fan' scene.
- The green rat, Greg, keeps on saying "precisely" in the same tone over 11 TIMES throughout the movie, and it sounds like the same recording was recycled, possibly similar to an MP3/WAV file.
- It features some rather inappropriate moments for a family movie.
- Marcel's rivals are sent to a laboratory where they're subsequently experimented on by scientists. Despite this, in the end, one of the villains says that the captured rats have been treated well by the scientists working there.
- During the scene where they put on their dance, the villains can be heard mumbling really weirdly. (clear)
- Carol walks in a rather sexually provocative manner, presumably political propaganda on left specter.
- During the suit-up montage, Greg is shown pulling out two lumps of cheese in a manner that makes it look like he's doing so from out of his groin.
- Continuity error: In the scene where Marcel finds a bar of chocolate in which Carol states that they've "never had any chocolate before", even though Greg used that ingredient to make some ice cream earlier in the movie. If not exhaustive, this would be considered rather a goof according to IMDB.
- Two-thirds of the film is loaded with filler that adds nothing to the plot. Nothing happens in the first 12 minutes of the film, except for repetitive, annoying, and overused dialogue of how much the customers like Marcel's food. There are even more obvious examples, with scenes that are repeated throughout the movie due to its low budget. For example, an out-of-nowhere action montage of the main characters getting ready for their mission is played three times in a row with no alterations. A scene of the group moving through a door is also played the same number of times in the movie.
- Speaking of the filler, the film has little-to-no story at all.
- To be fair, the film's plot overall feels more like a rejected SpongeBob SquarePants episode, even by the show's abysmal Seasons 6-8 standards, featuring Plankton attempting to steal the Krabby Patty Secret Formula from the Krusty Krab which is stretched-out to feature-length, rather than the movie the film tries to rip off.
- Some weird, strange, and downright annoying moments. For example, after the villains come up with their evil plans, they all dance and sing along together, annoyingly saying "ha-ha-ha-ha!" (Voice lines of which were never even in the original Brazilian dub, as stated earlier) all over and over again and making a lot of creepy noises until one of them scares a human woman. Also, they don't know that they can fly away from them. None of this is ever brought up again, which therefore makes that moment entirely pointless.
- All the female rat characters have lady parts and none of the rats' even wear clothes. This makes for a very uncomfortable scene where Carol turns to the camera and winks.
- Some of the scenes have fade-outs that look like they are commercial breaks but then they do them again only 10-20 seconds afterward, making them completely unnecessary and pointless.
- False advertising: On the DVD cover, Marcel wears a chef's outfit, complete with a hat, even though he isn't seen wearing it at all in the entire movie. The three protagonist mice have pink noses, but in the film, they are black like the other mice. Also, on the DVD cover again, Marcel is seen holding a plate of cheese, when in the actual film, he doesn't even make cheese at all.
- A couple of plot holes:
- BIGGEST PLOT HOLE: How is Marcel able to cook a variety of dishes using just one cooking cauldron with just any food ingredient mixed together in it?
- Junior's father thinks that "cheddar is just plastic", which is plain stupid. In fact, cheddar isn't even made of plastic, as it's made of real-life food.
- How can a single strawberry make a week's worth of dishes for Marcel's restaurant?!
- The ending is stupid and ridiculous, as Marcel's friends just laugh hysterically only because Greg says "precisely", and they continue laughing even more and he says it once again.
- There is no character development whatsoever, and all of the characters are one-dimensional. In fact, every single character in the film is depicted as complete idiots who are incredibly dumb as rocks with zero traces of intelligence whatsoever throughout the entire film, to the point that it's unfunny and instead gets incredibly irritating and frustrating to watch.
- All of the rats look fat and dumpy.
- To top it all off, the female rats all have curvaceous and chesty figures for no reason. Unexplainedly, most cartoons, whether from movies or shows, all give the non-anthropomorphic characters extremely feminine features. For example, the boy characters all look like normal animals, while the girl characters on the other hand, have breasts and eyelashes. Thankfully, The Lion King never did this trope with Nala.
"Precisely!" Qualities
- There is effort put into the voice acting of the English dub and it is good from actors like Wayne Grayson, Mike Pollock, and Dan Green. The narrator (Mike Pollock) also puts effort into the narrating. Despite this, the elderly rats' voices at the beginning are still very annoying.
- Aside from the glaring “Sinking Sky” error, the 2D animation for the opening shot of Rio De Janeiro is pretty nice and looks much better than the CGI animation of the rest of the film.
- Overall, the movie is so terrible that it's unintentionally hilarious.
Reception
Ratatoing has been heavily panned by critics and audiences, mainly for being a rip-off of Disney and Pixar's Ratatouille. It currently has a rating of 1.7/10 on IMDb, 49% on Rotten Tomatoes, and 36% on Google.
Videos
Movie
Trailer
Reviews
Trivia
- Lisa Ortiz has gone on record saying that she finds it disturbing that people have heard of Ratatoing, let alone watched and reviewed it.
- Mike Pollock has expressed annoyance from people asking him if he's ashamed of his role in the movie, stating that he isn't ashamed of any of his past roles; he sees the questions as mocking him simply for doing his job.
- One of the paintings features a rat that looks similar to Mickey Mouse.
- The mice look similar to the Louies from the Bomberman series of video games.
- This film was kind of parodied in a season 2 episode of The Amazing World of Gumball titled "The Treasure".
External Links
References
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