Tuesday Minute
No. 18 | January 26, 2010

Best of the Decade

Our theme this week
Best movies of the decade at Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes

Featured this week
Monday         —   The Hurt Locker

Ratatouille

The essentials
Metacritic:  96
Rotten Tomatoes:  96%

Pixar’s magic touch is evident in all its films, which blend great storytelling with the many wonders of new tools for animation.  Pixar hasn’t made a bad film, and made several on the short list of the very best.  Ratatouille (2007) is the one that critics favor, by a hair, as judged by Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes.  Why this film?  I suspect the critics have a soft spot for the story, which is about more than a rat in the kitchen with a passion for cooking.  It’s about art—what it takes to make art and why it’s important.  Art is something that critics think they know something about (and they should).  It’s a very good film, we all can agree, but perhaps the critics like it a shade more than everyone else.  (My four-year-old son seems to favor Cars, with WALL-E and Up close behind.  He may not know a lot about art, but he knows what he likes.)

Remy is the rat in Ratatouille.  He aspires to be a gourmet chef, an unlikely dream for a rat, but when the owner of the Parisian restaurant Gusteau’s dies, Remy’s talents in the kitchen prove indispensible to Linguini, the heir who lacks his father’s touch and for a time takes credit for Remy’s work.  The big night arrives, as food critic Anton Ego visits to review the restaurant.  The questions to be settled are whether Linguini and Remy can settle their differences to collaborate once again, who will get credit, and what will the critic do if he learns about the rat behind the ratatouille.  It’s an animated film for children—so the ending may be no surprise—but for viewers of any age it’s a fun ride to watch the action unfold.

Beyond the final credits
No other studio had as successful a run, with critics and at the box office, as Pixar this past decade.  (So successful, it was purchased by its onetime partner Disney in 2006.)  Pixar’s has the admiration, and is the envy, of the rest of the industry.  Since the motion picture academy began awarding Oscars for Best Animated Feature in 2001, Pixar has won four of eight (and Toy Story won a Special Achievement Award).  Each Pixar release has earned more than $300 million globally (more than $500 million, for films since 2001).  All ten of Pixar’s features have won their share of critical acclaim.  Since we are looking at Metacritic (MC) and Rotten Tomatoes (RT) ratings this week, here’s how Pixar has done.

Toy Story (1995)
                            MC:  92  |  RT:  100%
A Bug’s Life (1998)
                            MC:  77  |  RT:  91%
Toy Story 2 (1999)
                            MC:  88  |  RT:  100%
Monsters, Inc. (2001)
                            MC:  78  |  RT:  95%
Finding Nemo (2003)
                            MC:  89  |  RT:  98%
The Incredibles (2004)
                            MC:  90  |  RT:  97%
Cars (2006)
                            MC:  73  |  RT:  75%
Ratatouille (2007)
                            MC:  96  |  RT:  96%
WALL-E (2008)
                            MC:  93  |  RT:  96%
Up (2009)
                            MC:  88  |  RT:  98%

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Ratatouille (2007)
Voices of Patton Oswald, Brad Garrett, Lou Romano

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Famous Firsts
Tillie’s Punctured Romance:  At 73 minutes, this 1914 film was the first feature-length comedy.  Tillie was played by future Oscar winner Marie Dressler, appearing with Charlie Chaplin and Mabel Normand.  The film was directed by Mack Sennett and featured the Keystone Kops.  (W.C. Fields starred in a 1928 comedy with the same title, but the two films are unrelated.)

…58…59…60.