Changing toons

The 1990s animated hit Toy Storychanged movies forever, but imitation of its brilliant formula is no longer enough to make a great cartoon. Can today's release, Ratatouille- the story of a rat working in a Paris kitchen - re-animate the genre? Donald Clarkemeets its makers

It's early summer and one corner of Paris has been taken over by propagandists for a blue-grey rat with a talent for sautéing and seasoning. Banners honouring the Great Rodent festoon the Hilton Hotel while representatives of the Bangalore Echo and the Tbilisi Herald mill about checking the batteries in their tape recorders.

The press junkets for Pixar films are always grand affairs. In the 12 years since Toy Storyirrevocably changed cinema - how many films can claim that? - computer-animated features have become one of the reliable staples of the film business. Virtually every major studio has a 3-D animation department, but the team at Pixar have always delivered the best stories and the most spectacular images. Such entertainments demand elaborate launches.

As John Lasseter, founder of Pixar, and his various lieutenants gather in Paris reports are already coming in that Brad Bird's Ratatouille, the studio's eighth feature, has received ecstatic reviews from US critics. Indeed, no other picture released this year - not even The Lives of Others- has picked up quite so many raves from reviewers across the Atlantic.

It is, therefore, somewhat ironic that the film finds time to take a poke at the art of the critic. Ratatouille, which concerns a rat's attempts to make it as a chef in a Parisian restaurant, features an insidiously evil food critic who declares himself more interested in constructing creative putdowns than actually savouring the food. What gives? The reviewers love Pixar.

"You think there's a beef with critics in the film?" Lasseter asks. "I think we are, in fact, supporting the essence of what critics do. The message is that critics should be concerned with discovering and supporting what's new. The film is supporting the essence of what critics do: being an expert and a connoisseur."

John Lasseter, a large man with a taste for Hawaiian shirts, seems to have become a deal less jolly as the years have progressed. Once irrepressibly garrulous in the company of the press, he now prickles at quite mild criticisms and seizes opportunities to get on the defensive.

In the two decades since Lasseter directed Luxo Jr, the short film concerning Anglepoise lamps that launched Pixar, he has, admittedly, become used to receiving the sort of unmoderated praise that follows Kim Jong-il around. Recently, pundits have, however, allowed themselves to voice the most cautious of doubts concerning Pixar's progress.

Cars, the studio's last film, made the expected ton of money, but received distinctly lukewarm reviews outside the US. Ratatouillehas deservedly been praised everywhere, but, though it turned a tidy profit domestically, it has not eaten up the American box-office quite as greedily as its predecessors.

Whereas every other Pixar film ranked among the top five US money-makers by the end of its respective year, Ratatouilleis currently only the eighth most lucrative film of 2007 in the US. Perhaps the plot, which takes in scuffles over probate and a romance between human sous chefs, plays a little too strongly towards grown-ups and doesn't deliver enough of the broad slapstick that infants demand. Brad Bird, who previously directed The Incrediblesfor Pixar, is having none of it.

"Look, we work our guts off to make these films as good as possible," he says. "We tend to think: do we want to see a movie about this? We try to work out what we would like to see. Look, if you try and angle your film towards the kids you will end up making something really patronising. Kids are not stupid. They are really smart. When I was a kid I loved films like Lawrence of Arabia. I didn't understand it all. But I was prepared to ask questions."

Bird's point is well made. Too many of the animations made by other studios treat children like slavering half-wits. Pixar has always allowed complex plotlines into its films and has eschewed cheap sentimentality for something a little like genuine emotion. DVDs of Ratatouille, a delightful, lively picture, will play to sensible children long after the cheaper competitors have been cast into the sand pit.

For all the Pixar team's confidence, there remains, however, a hint that a readjustment is taking place in the 3-D animation market.

The success of Toy Storypersuaded the other studios that any computer-animated film that permitted something to talk that did not normally do so - fish, donkeys, ants - would attract money as carrion attracts rats. For a decade or so this proved to be the case. A much-quoted remark by Dr Johnson springs to mind. "Sir, a woman's preaching is like a dog's walking on his hind legs," he said. "We should marvel not that it is done well, but that it is done at all."

For quite a while the very fact that a movie had been created in a computer was enough of a novelty to guarantee massive returns at the box-office. Indeed, the gang at Pixar could have been forgiven for wondering why they bothered maintaining quality control for fabulous pictures such as Monsters Inc, Finding Nemoand The Incredibles. Films as lousy as Shark Tale, Ice Ageand Barnyardmade untold squillions and, in doing so, seemed to prove that lack of script, vision or logic was no impediment to success.

Two years ago, Disney Pictures, a long-term corporate partner of Pixar, scored a massive hit with Chicken Little, another utterly unremarkable talking-animal picture, and, it seemed, proved beyond doubt that, in this market, there was no relationship between quality and financial return. Get the dog on his hind legs. Give him a hat. Get the cat to drive a motorbike. Have the parrot dance around to James Brown. Look forward to an avalanche of cash.

Happily for lovers of the genre, at some point in the last few years animation's version of the South Sea Bubble burst. Films such as The Wildand Meet the Robinsonsbombed badly and it suddenly became apparent that - the huge success of the so-so Shrek the Thirdnotwithstanding - natural selection was beginning to exert itself on the talking-animal phylum.

"You're saying there are too many talking animal movies around?" Lasseter inquires wearily. "To me it's not really about the subject matter. Ratatouilleis a talking animal movie, but it's what you do with that that's important."

Precisely. Ratatouillemay not dominate the box office quite as conspicuously as did Toy Storyor Finding Nemo, but Pixar's continuing devotion to the integrity of story will surely ensure that the studio never delivers an out-and-out financial failure. Consider the effort the studio put into the script for the new picture. Ratatouillewas originally to be directed by Jan Pinkava, but some months into development Bird was dragged in to sort out some narrative glitches. He ended up taking over the project.

"I had finally gotten time to take a holiday after The Incredibles," he says. "I got a call asking me to come on board with Ratatouille. It was simply because the movie had been in development a long time and time was running out. The crypt was about to open. We had a nice set, nice costumes, good character types, but we didn't quite have a story that worked. I was conflicted about taking over somebody else's baby, but the people that run this company are so incredible you can't say no."

The point of this story is that Pixar cared enough about the script to drag one of their most talented directors back from holiday. Other animation studios have made money developing features from scripts written on the back of fag packets.

If Lasseter's apparent flintiness is in any way connected to the apparent downturn in the animation market, he really should stop worrying. Now moonlighting as Chief Creative Officer with Disney Animation, the burly director has established a reputation for excellence that should allow Pixar to weather any financial storm. Mind you, he claims that he doesn't fancy the prospect of being the last man standing.

"I love animation and I have no problem with all these other studios getting into the business," he says. "I would much rather be one player in a healthy industry than the only player in a dead industry."

The incredibles: Donald Clarke's top 10 animated features - ever

1 Spirited Away (2001)

Though a great admirer of Walt Disney, Hayao Miyazaki, founder of Japan's great Studio Ghibli, has always allowed more explicit allusions to the tortures of adolescent sexuality into his own work. Spirited Away, the story of a young girl's adventures in an eerie world of animated sludge and huge-headed crones, is his most compelling and troubling treatise on the theme.

2 Toy Story 2 (1999)

John Lasseter pushes home his theory that even the flashiest animation requires a strong story to thrive and, along the way, delivers the only sequel to rival The Godfather Part IIor Bride of Frankenstein.

3 Pinocchio (1940)

Dumbowas funnier and Bambiwas sadder, but Pinocchiofeatured the perfect balance of fine songs, rounded characters and gorgeously intricate artwork. The backgrounds alone justify the price of the DVD.

4 Alice (1988)

Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderlandis already unsettling enough, but Jan Svankmajer, the great Czech stop-motion surrealist, uses cogs, fabric and various dead things to fashion a veritable nightmare from the tale. The only one of his features to compare with his stunning short films.

5 Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Isao Takahata's tale of two orphans trying to get by after the bombing of Kobe in the second World War is almost unbearable in its focus on ordinary human cruelty. Deserves to be better known.

6 The Incredibles (2004)

Possibly the most visually arresting of Pixar's features, Brad Bird's tale of retired superheroes also managed a stunning hit rate of fabulous gags. The director's voicework as Edna Mode is particularly noteworthy.

7 Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

Defying all Dreamworks' pleas to accommodate an American audience, Nick Park delivers a delightful claymation tribute to Ealing, Hammer and many points between without, for an instant, losing his juvenile audience. Pure joy.

8 The Iron Giant (1999)

So Brad Bird, director of Ratatouille, proves to be the only director with two films on the list. His traditionally-animated adaptation of Ted Hughes's The Iron Man, flopped on release, but is finding an audience on DVD.

9 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

The one that started it all. Generations of male adolescents, turned off by Snow White's helium blandness, have experienced their first erotic stirrings at the sight of the impossibly glamorous evil Queen.

10 Dougal and the Blue Cat (1970)

The Magic Roundabout, a French kids' series given English dialogue by Emma Thompson's dad, was one of the oddest televisual phenomena of the hippie era. Disgracefully, the wonderful film version - fabulous songs, freaky story - is not currently on DVD.