Ratatouille Discussion

There's a good article and discussion on the movie Ratatouille at the Daily Dramatica blog (and I'm not just saying that because of my obnoxious comments). The basic premise of the discussion is that the movie feels to long because it cheats on its story limit:

Ratatouille begins with a Timelock. The story centers on the world famous Gusteau’s restaurant located in the heart of Paris. Gusteau, now deceased, established in his will that 2 years after his passing, if no rightful heir could be found, the restaurant would be passed on to the Head Chef - in this case, Skinner (brilliantly voiced by Ian Holm). The 2 year deadline is the Timelock; once that deadline has passed the restaurant will fall into Skinner’s hands. Several times throughout the first half of the film we are reminded of this Story Limit (what most refer to as “the ticking clock”). This constant reminder builds up an expectation in us: once that limit has been reached, the story has to end.

But the time limit is reached midway through the movie leaving the audience to wonder what's going on. My response is that there's really an option limit centered around the storyline of restoring Gusteau's back to its glory days of Five stars. This solves some problems but uncovers others.

Ultimately, I think the movie is so richly told that the story defies a simple story structure analysis and forces you to really dig into each throughline and work out all of the dynamics as though it was its own story. This may be violating all sorts of dramatica laws but I think it's interesting to think about.

For instance, the MC storyline is itself is almost a standalone story with Remy's desire to be a chef, his special gift, his life with his brother and father, the conflict between rat life and human life, and the ghost of Gusteau egging him on to pursue his dreams.

Then, the IC storyline contains the story of Linguini, his new job at the restaurant, conflicts with Skinner and the kitchen staff, the truth that Gusteau is his father, the timelocked limit that turns ownership of the restaurant over to him, AND the romance with Colette.

And all that's assuming that I'm correctly understanding the difference between what the OS storyline is about and what the other throughlines are about.

The great thing about a really good movie is that it gives you lots of things to chew on. It also gives you lots of ideas of how you can organize your own work.