Bee Movie v. Ratatouille

Time for another movie comparison, this time about two animated movies about animals.  I liked one better than the other.  Take a guess which.

Bee Movie.  This marks Jerry Seinfeld’s return to mainstream media since his show, “Seinfeld”, ended.  No sign of Jason Alexander, Michael Richards, or Julia Louis-Dreyfus (Patrick “Puddy” Warburton was the only other Seinfeld cast member here).  Too bad.  This is yet another one of those “alternate worlds” we were already dosed with in “Monsters, Inc.”, “Robots”, and “A Bug’s Life” among many, many others.  Plus, I’m not keen on bees and can’t stand yellow.  Too clever for its own good.  And they topped it off with this idiotic lawsuit against humans for stealing honey.  Give me a break. 

            The best thing about the film, though, was this.  The bees, upon reaching maturity, choose a particular bee job from a menu, like ordering at a fast food joint, and have to keep that job for the rest of their lives, with not a single day off.  Barry is reluctant to do so, yet somehow he’s the only one who feels that way.  Renee Zellweger plays the human girl he befriends, and Chris Rock plays an ebonic-speaking mosquito.

Ratatouille.  Ahh, beaucoup mieux.  The rats are rats!  They scurry along the gutters and between the cracks in the walls, and don’t pretend to be an advanced civilization of their own.  Aside from talking – and being able to cook – they act like rats.  Remy, the rat who can cook, finds himself allied with Linguini, the chef Gusteau’s long-lost son.  Their nemesis: Anton Ego (the insufferable restaurant critic who is unbelievably arrogant and impossible to impress) and Skinner, the sous-chef who stands to win ownership of the restaurant if he can only keep Linguini out of the picture long enough.  The love interest is a cute chick Colette who also works at the restaurant.  Of course we know the hero will win and get Colette, but how the trip proceeds is nonetheless worth watching and enjoying.  And it’s PARIS!  Not nearly as annoying as “Moulin Rouge” and all the other Paris films which give us a heavy dose of pretentiousness (and that idiotic accordion music) as the price of seeing Paris again on the screen.