Change Your Image
esauboeck
Reviews
Ratatouille (2007)
Boring but beautiful
Sorry, guys, but after all the hype this film received as a "meaty" animated film, I just can't agree that this will be a "classic" or some kind of turning point in animated film. I was bored from beginning to end, except for the scene with Anton Ego and his great speech about the critic's role in life. I mean, who is this film geared toward? Are kids the least bit interested in inside jokes about gourmet food prepared by a rat who wants to be a chef? (Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential," with his assertion that most people working in restaurants are ex-criminals, was all over this, of course.) It wasn't amusing or persuasive, and the storyline was entirely predictable and not much of a story anyway. I used to tell myself stories to make myself go to sleep at night about rabbits that wanted to swim like frogs and such--and this feels about as far-fetched and thin. It IS beautiful in its animated effects, of which it is rightfully proud--but maybe this is the problem. The process has taken over the content. I really wanted to like this, but it really fell flat.
My Father, the Genius (2002)
Fascinating but frustrating, too
While it was very interesting to get a bit of the architectural history of Los Angeles in that period and the beginnings of Glenn Small's career, I found myself increasingly frustrated with the fact that no one seemed to recognize that this guy is pathologically incapable of feeling emotions about anyone else, and that his attitudes about women were unconscionable. His attitudes were not just arrogance and self-centerdness, they were pathological--perhaps Asperger's or something similar? But I did think the daughters were tremendously forgiving of him. What a dreamer he was/is--and, of course, the problem with those who think they are uncompromising geniuses is that they end up not being able to produce much actual work to PROVE that they are geniuses. It's all in the actions, in the end. But Lucia Small should be congratulated for confronting such an emotional subject via film. It's a good thing she had that phone message to play at the end--in which he actually says "I love you"! Otherwise I felt he should have been completely ostracized from human society...