Linguini and Remy meet, somehow establish trust and communication, and when Linguini gets credit for a soup that the rat has saved with strategic seasonings, they team up. Lowest of the low is Gusteau's "nephew" Linguini ( Lou Romano), who must be hired, but is assigned to the wretched job of plongeur - literally, one who washes the dishes by plunging them into soapy water. Alas, when the monstrous food critic Anton Ego ( Peter O'Toole) issues a scathing indictment of Gusteau's recent cooking, the chef dies in a paroxysm of grief or perhaps it is not a paroxysm, but I like the word, and the kitchen is taken over by the sniveling little snipe Skinner ( Ian Holm).
Remy (voice of Patton Oswalt) has always been blessed, or cursed, with a refined palate and a sensitive nose, and now he starts skulking around the kitchen of Gusteau, his culinary hero (voice of Brad Garrett). (Famous British recipe: "Cook until gray.") This is the establishment of Auguste Gusteau, author of the best-seller Anyone Can Cook, a title that might not go over very well in France, which is why the book appears to be in English, and might well be titled, Anyone Can Cook Better Than the English. Students of Victor Hugo will know that the hero Jean Valjean of Les Miserables found the Seine because he knew that every sewer must necessarily run downhill toward it, and indeed Remy washes up near the river, in view of the most famous restaurant in tout le France. The rats are evicted from their cozy home in a cottage-kitchen ceiling in a scene that will have rat-haters in the audience cringing (and who among us will claim they don't hate rats more than a little?), and they are swept through the sewers in a torrential flood. "Eat your garbage!" commands Remy's father, Django, obviously a loving parent. Remy is a member of a large family of rats (a horde, I think, is the word) who ply the trash cans and sewers of a Parisian suburb, just like good rats should. I think running for office might not be beyond his reach, and there's certainly something de Gaullean about his snout.
Remy, the earnest little rat who is its hero, is such a lovable, determined, gifted rodent that I want to know happens to him next, now that he has conquered the summit of French cuisine. A lot of animated movies have inspired sequels, notably " Shrek," but Brad Bird's "Ratatouille" is the first one that made me positively desire one.
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