Animation Oscar Bite 2008: Year of The Rat

80th Academy Awards - 24th February 2008

The contenders: Persepolis, Ratatouille, Surf's Up

The winner: Ratatouille

The rightful winner: Ratatouille

The barrel-scraper: Surf's Up

Other Notes:

Okay, so I mentioned last time that Cars was always going to be at a disadvantage for me because I think automobiles are boring and dull and the idea of an alternate universe populated entirely by automobiles strikes me as kind of inherently creepy. Ratatouille, on the other hand, was right at the other end of the spectrum, in that they were going to have to screw it up really, really badly for me to dislike it. This was a film that went straight for my Achilles heel - that is, my long-standing affection for  Rattus norvegicus. Willard I am; many a day in my life has been brightened simply by having a fancy rat park their scaly tail upon my shoulder. And, unlucky me, I chose to put my emotional investment into a creature that's traditionally anthropomorphised as one of the villains of the animal kingdom. So when I learned that Pixar were making a film where a rat actually got to be the hero, it almost seemed too good to be true (and it very nearly was - Ratatouille had one of Pixar's more notoriously troubled productions; Brad Bird, fresh off The Incredibles, inherited the project after Jan Pinkava's initial blueprints fell through). Ratatouille was the rat film I had been waiting for my whole life. That it happened to be such a great film on top of that was a lovely bonus.

One thing I was all over about Ratatouille was how much care and attention had evidently gone into replicating those murine movements and mannerisms - whenever Remy and his brethren budged an inch there was always something wonderfully, intrinsically rattish about it. I understand that Pinkava's version of the film had actually pushed in the opposite direction, in making the rats so anthropomorphic that they ceased to move or even look terribly much like rats; such was the fear that audience would find the subject too skin-crawling. It makes me not weep too much for his lost labours. I'm reminded of how in the run-up to A Bug's Life Pixar would talk about how they set out to reduce the "ick factor" associated with bugs and, naturally, that extra pair of appendages was the first thing to go (the characters' moral allegiances are even coded, predominantly, as "four legs good, six legs bad", with the villainous grasshoppers being leggier creatures than the honest ants). That always bugged me (pun intended), as it gives the impression that A Bug's Life didn't particularly trust its own subject matter (insects don't have to be "gross" - they're beautiful, magnificent and mysterious. Haven't you ever seen Microcosmos?). I think Bird did well in not instilling Ratatouille with a similar coyness; it doesn't shy away from the fact that it's a film about rats, asking the viewer instead to move past whatever reservations they might have. It's a film that oozes a genuine passion for everything it encompasses, from the artistry of fine cuisine to the gracefulness in allowing its pint-sized protagonists to express their fundamental ratness.

Once again, the UK release was blighted with a pointless localisation, with celebrity chef Jamie Oliver being pasted in as the voice of the health inspector (replacing Tony Fucile), but compared to Clarkson's cameo in Cars Oliver's performance was at least fairly low-key and not too obnoxious (besides, it could have been worse - they could've gotten Gordon Ramsey, in which case I would've had no choice but to boycott the UK release altogether).

Persepolis, a feature adaptation of Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel about her adolescence in Iran during the Islamic Revolution, was another strong entry, a powerful coming of age drama told in stark black-and-white tones. For all its haunting contemplations upon finding one's place and identity in a world that scarcely seems to recognise one as an individual, I'm a little ashamed to admit that what mainly sticks out in my memory is the random "Eye of the Tiger" interlude (the film is not without a sense of humour, despite tackling such sombre subject matter).

Last and least of the bunch was the sophomore effort of the still-fledging Sony Pictures Animation. Surf's Up was a step up from Open Season - unlike that film, it at least tried to bring something different to the wacky, animal-orientated CG comedy table, in being a penguinised parody of The Endless Summer (the trailer, which played the concept hilariously straight, looked fairly promising). Problem is that I don't think they really knew how to work the mockumentary gimmick and tell a coherent story all in one, and the second the novelty wears off, the film itself loses interest. There are long stretches in the second half where it seems to ditch the mockumentary angle altogether - we still get a lot of brief, Creature Comforts-esque vox pop skits interspersed throughout, but whenever we return to the main penguin's story all sense of the on-screen action being trailed an in-universe camera crew suddenly disappears; nor do the characters exhibit any awareness that there are theoretically cameras pointed at them the entire time (this becomes a problem when the Jeff Bridges penguin divulges deep, dark secrets he blatantly doesn't intend to be spread around). It's decent enough, but I have a feeling that Aardman would have handled it better. Or maybe not - their attempts at a mockumentary version of The Tortoise and The Hare reportedly crashed and burned quite messily behind the scenes.


The Snub Club:

Pixar may have been right at the top of their game, but 2007 was not a great year for DreamWorks Animation. Oh sure, Shrek The Third still racked up big numbers at the box office, but it was at this point that audiences really started to fall out of love with the grimy green ogre, and it suddenly became fashionable to hate a franchise which had been considered the height of cool just six years prior. My mother, who loved the original, called this one "trash" and expressed anger that someone was apparently paid for writing it. Myself, I wasn't massively keen on the first two installments, but even I was taken back by what a massive step down in quality Shrek The Third was - it's such a dreary, manufactured, joyless experience, and there's nothing to suggest that anyone involved in the making of the film derived absolutely any pleasure from the process. Shrek and Fiona's ghastly, gaseous hellspawn offer nothing of any value or endearment, while Justin Timberlake's King Arthur quickly grates on the nerves, but by far the film's biggest error of judgement was in making Prince Charming the main villain - in Shrek 2 he was little more than a joke/plot device (yet another inversion on traditional fairy tale ideals), but here he's had the role of Big Bad awkwardly thrust upon him for no greater reason, one suspects, than the writers awkwardly fumbling around for some vague thread of continuity from the previous film. Charming is way too ineffectual to be main villain material, and the film's treatment of him is just cold.

Oh, but later that year DreamWorks also released Bee Movie. So it wasn't a total wash. I have no idea quite what Bee Movie supposes it's doing - it's by far the strangest, most inexplicable thing to be sitting in DreamWorks' canon right now, a film that defies logic, coherence and narrative aesthetic in favour of endless bee puns and the most bizarre case of interspecies romance this way west of "Opposites Attract" (good thing I'm open-minded, eh?). It might have been conceived as a kind of parody of Pixar's fanciful, anthropomorphised world-building (predating Sausage Party by nine years), although that's probably giving it too much credit. Bee Movie has the distinctive flavour of a joke that was carried too far; it never takes flight as a film and it feels downright awkward packaged as something you could babysit the kids with. A financial failure on release, Bee Movie has since become something of a cult item, and for that I'm glad. Any film this balls-to-the-walls, hypnotically inane sorely deserves an appreciative viewership.

Meanwhile, Disney's love affair with CG continued with Meet The Robinsons. I'll get round to watching it...one day. Its impact was fairly minimal, but all indications tell me that it's head and shoulders above Chicken Little, and that's a decent enough start.

Elsewhere in 2007, The Simpsons made their long-awaited big screen debut after years of rumours and speculation and tinkering that went nowhere (they'd been toying with the idea of a Simpsons movie since at least as far back as Season 4, when James L. Brooks had suggested that the script of "Kamp Krusty" be expanded to feature length). At the time, I knew some folks who were absolutely shocked that The Simpsons Movie didn't make the nominees list, but it really didn't surprise me. With the awkward exception of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, feature adaptations of televised cartoons have never held much sway when it comes to Academy recognition. There's also the fact that The Simpsons Movie wasn't very good...or maybe I was just sour because my favourite character wasn't in it. I got a handful of muted chuckles from the film, but the total lack of Sideshow Bob was a definite deal-breaker. If you think that sounds petty, put yourself in my place - Kelsey Grammer had confirmed early on in production that he'd recorded lines for the film, and I was so happy at the news that Bob would be involved that I told absolutely everyone I knew. Then when the film came out and transpired to be an entirely Terwilliger-free experience, not only did I have to deal with my personal disappointment, for a while I also had to contend with people coming up to me and saying, "Hey, didn't you tell me that Sideshow Bob was going to be in The Simpsons Movie? Well, I didn't see him anywhere..." Yeah, it seems that Bob was included in an early version of the script but got taken out. Apparently they test screened the shit out of this film throughout production and a LOT of consideration was given to feedback from audience members who weren't familiar with the show, with the intention of engineering a movie that was accessible to fans and non-fans alike; with that in mind, I'm going to take an educated guess that Bob got jettisoned because his character isn't exactly self-explanatory and there was some concern that laypeople would find his whole deal too confusing (Hank Scorpio from "You Only Move Twice" was going to be the villain at one point but got dumped for that very reason). Okay, fair enough, but they couldn't even spare Bob a measly background cameo? (Some people swear that Bob is lurking somewhere in the angry mob sequence but...he isn't. Believe me, I've looked.)

Finally, Imagi Animation gave me the opportunity to indulge my inner six-year-old with the release of TMNT, the Ninja Turtles' first theatrical outing in fourteen years. Before seeing it, I tried hard to put myself in the mind-set of that small child who'd once been insatiable for the adventures of Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael and Michelangelo. I've no doubt that six-year-old me would have loved this movie. Unfortunately, adult me is more of a stickler, and the instant I left that auditorium I was overwhelmed in contemplating the sheer number of plot-holes I'd just been asked to swallow. So, let's get this straight - these thirteen (mostly) gargantuan monsters were unleashed on Earth millennia ago and nobody's seriously noticed them until now? Compared to that, a woolly mammoth deluded enough to think she's a possum is an easy sell.