Ratatoing
An animated movie from Video Brinquedo.
Marcel Toing is a talking rat living in a world of talking rats. He owns the famous restaurant, Ratatoing. After spending time talking about the food, he, his wife Carol, and Greg get the food from other places. Meanwhile, a group of villain mice plan to find out the secret of the recipes.
Review by Film Brain here, and by Reaction and Review here.
Contrast Ratatouille.
Tropes used in Ratatoing include:
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Of the Sally Acorn-esque "boobs without nipples" variety.
- Catch Phrase: Greg's "Precisely!"
- Department of Redundancy Department: Much of the dialogue in Ratatoing consists of characters repeating what someone just said, pointing out something which is obvious from the visuals, or repeating what someone just said.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Someone trying to sabotage your restaurant? Send them to an "out of town laboratory."
- Eek! A Mouse!
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending
- Gonk: The cat.
- Idiot Ball: Everyone at one point or another. Ironically, Greg comes off as the smartest when he's supposed to be the idiot.
- Informed Ability: The first five minutes of Ratatoing are nothing but people repeating how good Marcel Toing's food is. The sight of the actual food itself would suggest otherwise. It gets even worse when we learn Marcel doesn't even make the food, he just steals it from humans.
- Inherently Funny Words: TOING.
- Irony: Greg's supposed to be the idiot, but he ends up coming across as the smartest mouse in the movie.
- Karma Houdini: Marcel. No one has a problem with him having his competitors taken to be used as test rats in a laboratory (although one of the patrons tells us they're being treated very well there).
- Lock and Load Montage: Which gets used three times in the film. And has a rat pulling two chunks of cheese from his crotch.
- Lost in Translation: The Brazilian original was obviously supposed to take place in Rio de Janeiro. The English narrator refers to it only as "The marvellous city, land of sun and heat." This leads to a restaurant patron casually saying she'd come from "a great distance" (instead of, say, "all the way from Brasilia") to sample the delicious food.
- Lull Destruction: Watch the preparation scene and the dancing scene in their original Brazilian language, and then take a gander at the English version.
- The Mockbuster: Ratatouille with a bit of Flushed Away to boot.
- Palette Swap: Most of the rats are recolors of the same two models with hair pieces added.
- Shout-Out: One of the mice wear Mickey Mouse ears.
- Stupid Statement Dance Mix: U. N. Owen Was... A Mouse!
- Thriving Ghost Town: The narrator describes Rio as, among other things, full of people, while showing an empty street.