History Headscratchers / Ratatouille

** So, what exactly did Linguini love, if not cooking? It's never really made clear what his motivation is, if anything. That just undermines the message even more.

** By "anyone can cook", I think the authors meant "no matter the circumstances of your birth, you should be able to do what you love."

* Am I really the only one bothered by the fact that the core message of the film, that "Anyone can cook," is defeated by Linguini never developing a skill for cooking and becoming nothing more than a waiter? Wouldn't the ending have been more exciting if Linguini had to cook the ratatouille himself, realizing mid-process that Collette's training had actually worked? Instead, he gets no character development whatsoever.

* Is it ever actually explained precisely ''why'' Ego because the creepily cadaverous, cruel, CausticCritic he did? For me, the whole "he's not such a monster, really" thing falls a bit flat if they didn't explain why, then, he was acting like one.

** I got the feeling the reason she didn't want it known was to protect Gusteau, along the lines of, "Don't let people know the famous, well known, and family-friendly chef had an extramarital affair."

** Besides, humans have persecuting and murdering sentient species all throughout history. It's just this one is a Non-Human sapient spieceis.

* Skinner is a bad guy for not telling Linguini about his parentage, and indeed, his reasons for hiding it are entirely selfish. But one thing that the movie doesn't really dwell on is that his mother didn't ''want'' him to know; [[NoodleIncident we don't know why she feels that way]], and maybe she would have changed her mind if she realized the truth would fix all of her son's money trouble, but we can't say for sure. One could certainly argue that he has a ''right'' to know even against her wishes--especially with the inheritance issue--but my point is that while Skinner ''was'' a JerkAss, even if he had been a nice guy there wouldn't have been a clear-cut answer about what he should have done.

** [[BeyondTheImpossible Gusteau's was just]] ''[[BeyondTheImpossible that good]]''.

** Gusteau's was just ''that good''.

* It is stated that Gusteau's was a five star restaurant. Upscale French rating only has three stars.

** "[[MontyPythonAndTheHolyGrail I defray the ozone in your general neighborhood!]]"

** Reckless Endangerment (or the French equivalent) comes to mind.

* One of Horst's explanations for why he was in jail was "I created a hole in the ozone over Avignon." Would that actually be a crime? What could they possibly charge him with?

** I'd just like to point out, it was never stated exactly how Gusteau died. While suicide is a perfectly logical conclusion to come to, it was just mentioned he died shortly after Ego's review.

** This is the same company which says good things about [[TheLionKing lions]], tigers (Jasmine's pet in Aladdin) and various other creatures that are surprisingly deadly. Anything can be a main character in Disney, and they made Remy so cute I could care less. (Plus it probably won't encourage children to pick up a rat and hug it, since...well, they're ''rats''. Instincts are scream on sight for most of us.) Then again, Remy being a rat could be a reference to Disney's nickname [[ClassicDisneyShorts 'The Mouse']]...which by critics is mutated to be 'The Rat'.

** This is the same company which says good things about [[TheLionKing lions]], tigers(Jasmine's pet in Aladdin) and various other creatures that are surprisingly deadly. Anything can be a main character in Disney, and they made Remy so cute I could care less. (Plus it probably won't encourage children to pick up a rat and hug it, since...well, they're ''rats''. Instincts are scream on sight for most of us.) Then again, Remy being a rat could be a reference to Disney's nickname [[ClassicDisneyShorts 'The Mouse']]...which by critics is mutated to be 'The Rat'.

**** It wouldn't necessarily be that easy. People would be more likely to assume that it was all some clever stage trick and/or that Linguini was simply a gifted animal trainer. If they tried partnering remy up with someone beside Linguini, that other someone would likely be suspected to be "in on the trick." And even if it ''was'' accepted that Remy was intelligent, that wouldn't necessarily mean people would accept that ''all'' rats are.

******* If Pixar wanted to make a shiny, happy film about cooking rats without getting sidetracked by all that messy xenocide stuff, they [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality shouldn't have brought it up in the first place.]] Unfortunately, they ''do'' bring it up, even going so far as to let Remy's father [[StrawmanHasAPoint give a little speech about how humans kill their kind]] while standing in front of an exterminator's storefront [[NightmareFuel with dead rats hanging in the window]]. Saying that addressing this would it would have made the script longer or unfocused is missing the point; Pixar could have sidestepped the issue entirely if they wanted to, but instead they decided to milk it for drama and then ignore it later creating some distubing implications. Naturally, getting humanity to accept that [[FantasticRacism rats are people too]] would have been difficult, and any effort on the part of main characters' towards this end would not be guaranteed to succeed, but it's downright upsetting that every major character spends the entire film entirely preoccupied with their trivial personal concerns [[ItsAllAboutMe (I want to be a chef! I have a crush on my coworker! An excellent restaurant is about to go out of business!)]] with nary a thought for the ethical considerations of the deeply horrific discoveries they make during that timeframe . Besides, when important concerns that arise from the premise organically are being pushed aside to make way for less important, more contrived conflicts, that's just plain bad writing.

*** But Linguini and Remy are clearly capable of communicating with each other to a certain extent, even if they don't share a common language. Hell, Remy can directly influence Linguini's actions via hair-pulling. Linguini might be a bit slow, but Remy's a heartless bastard if it never occurred to him to try and use this ability to stop humans from murdering his kind. Also, Remy understood written French. SoYeah.