Episode 13: Saving Steven Spielberg

This week, we talk about the themes and influence of Steven Spielberg's filmography. What's the Spielberg Kid? Fathers, children, and innocence lost and regained. Is the Patriarch a hipster? Also: God's Not Dead as done by Spielberg and Indiana Jones as done by Malick. Find out in Episode 13 of The Pilgrim's Podcast.

Ratatouille - Review

What does it mean to create? What does it mean to critique? These are two questions I didn’t expect to hear voiced in an animated children’s film about a French rat.

But then, Brad Bird is the man when it comes to upending expectations.

Remy is a country rat with an unusually acute sense of smell. While this gift leads him to become a food connoisseur, his more practical family employ him to be the Poison Detector. Remy, on the other hand, has other ideas. Inspired by a cookbook entitled “Anyone Can Cook,” he begins on a gourmet career that will lead him to the very heart of Paris. There, he makes friends with an awkward garbage boy named Linguini, and using this human companion, makes a splash in the culinary world.

Ratatouille manages to avoid the majority of animal-film clichés. Remy is chipper and positive, but he is also intelligent and complex; Linguini has a life beyond just being the Faithful Master. It avoids cuteness, and though there’s a brief anti-cruelty-to-animals moment, it sidesteps more heavy-handed commentary, such as the anti-gun theme in Bird’s earlier film The Iron Giant. The animation is interesting and artistic, creating a beautiful, atmospheric vision of Paris. The cast is almost devoid of caricatures, and the major one I remember is offset by development from a parallel character.