An animated movie from Vídeo Brinquedo.
Marcel Toing is a talking rat living in a world of talking rats, who owns the famous restaurant Ratatoing. After closing time, he and his friends Carol and Greg get the food from other places to use in their restaurant. Meanwhile, a group of villain mice plan to find out the secret of the recipes.
Contrast Ratatouille, since it's a knockoff of it — kind of. The film's plot (such as it is) has little in common with the Pixar film.
This film provides examples of:
- Accessory-Wearing Cartoon Animal: Some of the female rats wear necklaces.
- Artistic License – Animal Care: Toing and his friends are shown attempting to steal chocolate for their restaurant. While rats can handle chocolate better than dogs, it's still not healthy for them due to it being full of caffeine and refined sugar.
- Barbie Doll Anatomy: Of the Sally Acorn-esque "boobs without nipples" variety for the female rats.
- Bilingual Bonus: "Toing" is a Spanish onomatopoeia for a squeaking sound, which fits with the movie being about rats.
- Buffoonish Tomcat: This is rather reminiscent of Tom from Tom and Jerry and/or an Sylvester-esque style in two scenes where Marcel deceives the fat cat named Palo that was chasing him and having the cat chasing him when reappearing (also the cat's amusing running animation when standing up helps out his clownish "Dumb Muscle" look as well).
- Character Catchphrase: Greg says "Precisely!" eleven times during the movie.
- Character Shilling: Fills the first ten minutes of the runtime, with everyone sitting in the restaurant talking about how great the food and the chef is.
- City with No Name: Averted. While explicitly Rio de Janeiro, it is referred to only as "the marvelous city" and "this city" in the English dub. Without context, it seems like the narrator is going out of his way to avoid saying the name of the city, but "the Marvelous City" ("Cidade Maravilhosa" in Portuguese) is actually a common nickname for Rio in Brazil.
- Covers Always Lie: The official DVD box art (as seen on the page image) depicts Marcel wearing a chef's gown and hat. He never wears it in the movie proper.
- Department of Redundancy Department: Much of the dialogue in the movie consists of characters repeating the same things, with another character repeating what someone just said, pointing out something which is obvious from the visuals, or repeating what someone just said.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Marcel and his friends catch the rivals trying to sabotage their restaurant and get them sent to an out of town laboratory.
- Double Entendre: When Marcel, Carol and Greg are going to the kitchen to steal more food:Carol: Hey, my handsome friend, are you ready for more food adventures tonight?Marcel: I'm always ready, because I know how to keep my equipment prepared!
- Easily Forgiven: Downplayed. Marcel has two of his competitors sent to an out of town laboratory. Their wives aren't exactly thrilled with this, but continue to come and eat at his restaurant anyway.
- Eek, a Mouse!!: As part of the villain's plan. They scare the patrons of the human restaurant, so they increase "security" and make it harder for Marcel to get ingredients.
- "Everybody Laughs" Ending: From Greg saying his Catchphrase. He even says it again while they're laughing!
- Failed a Spot Check:Marcel: Just look at all that delicious cheese just waiting to be taken!Carol: Oh really? But what about the cat?Marcel: There's no sign of him, I checked everywhere!Greg: Look behind you, Marcel! *cut to cat standing directly behind Marcel*
- Greg fails to notice one of the antagonists using the secret tunnel, directly in front of him. Although considering Marcel couldn't see the strawberries on the table without using a pair of night-vision goggles, perhaps they just couldn't see it.
- Filling the Silence: Marcel and company's gear-up montages don't have a word of dialogue, nor does the scene where the rival rats scare the humans. In both cases, the English dub improvises some hums and grunts to go with the characters' movement.
- Fly in the Soup: Played with; one of the villains seems to notice a fly in his meal and calls the waiter over to complain, but it's to complain that he ordered the flies in Gorgonzola sauce, and his meal clearly has Camembert sauce instead. This Bait-and-Switch is justified by the fact that he's a rat who wouldn't be put off by eating flies.
- Gonk: Palo the cat has a weird design that stands out from the rats.
- The Heart: Carol acts as a mediator to Marcel and Greg.
- Heel–Face Turn: Shown with Palo the cat, after having been fed by Marcel. It cooperates with him to take out the rival rats and becomes a recurring customer in his restaurant afterward.
- Idiot Ball:
- Despite seeing how Greg turned on the ceiling fan, Carol still takes a minute and a half to turn it off again, while being given very simple instructions.
- Greg decides to grab hold of Marcel instead of turning off the fan despite knowing how to operate it.
- Impossibly Delicious Food: Reiterated repeatedly. It's not so much that the food or Marcel's cooking is special — it's that the customers have only ever eaten things that came out of the trash.
- Informed Ability: The first twelve minutes of Ratatoing are nothing but customers repeating how good Marcel Toing's food is. The sight of the actual food itself would suggest otherwise. Then again, they are rats.
- Perishable food which is just left lying on the table all night. And he makes it last all week without refrigeration since he only steals on Thursdays. Still wondering why the cooking pot he constantly stirs is filled with brown sludge?
- Irony: Greg is supposed to be the idiot, but ends up coming across as one of the smarter characters in the movie.
- Karma Houdini: No one has a problem with Marcel having his competitors taken to be used as test rats in a laboratory (although one of the antagonists reveals they're being treated very well there).
- Lock-and-Load Montage: Which gets used three times in the film. And has Greg pulling chunks of cheese from his crotch.
- Lost in Translation:
- The movie is obviously supposed to take place in Rio de Janeiro, but in the English version it's only ever referred to by its Brazilian nickname "the Marvelous City", making it seem like the narrator is keeping the true setting a secret.
- A restaurant patron casually saying she'd come from "a great distance" (instead of, for example, "all the way from Brasilia") to sample the delicious food.
- In spite of the film itself never mentioning Rio de Janeiro by name, its English trailer does.
- Mega Neko: Palo to the rats. Although this only applies to the them because Palo seems smaller than typical cats when he is seen with people.
- The Mockbuster: Ratatouille with a bit of Flushed Away as well.
- Namesake Gag: The restaurant is named "Ratatoing", after its owner and founder, Marcel Toing.
- No Name Given: Oscar's wife is called "Brown Haired Rat" by the credits.
- Oddly Small Organization: Only four rats appear to work at Marcel's restaurant.
- Palette Swap: Most of the rats are recolors of the same two models with hairpieces added.
- Pink Means Feminine: The heroine rat Carol is pink.
- Series Continuity Error: Carol states that they've "never had any chocolate before" in their restaurant, but in an earlier scene they offered a customer chocolate sponge cake with ice cream and biscuit bran.
- Shout-Out:
- On the food raids, Greg wears a black beanie hat, essentially giving him Mickey Mouse ears.
- One of the paintings is a mouse version of the Mona Lisa.
- Silly Walk: Rather a 'Silly Run' variant with Palo running in a very silly manner.
- Stock Footage: The scene with the trio prepping to raid the human kitchen is reused in its entirety later in the movie.
- Supermodel Strut: All of the female rats sway their hips while walking.
- Thriving Ghost Town: The narrator describes Rio as full of people, while showing an empty street.
- Villain Protagonist: Marcel's a liar, a thief, and sends any rats who know his secret off to a lab to be test subjects... and he's the main character.
- You Dirty Rat!: Zigzagged as rats are both heroes and villains.
