Ratatouille, Why Not "Rata2-D"?

In a conversation about film, the term “two-dimensional” is almost always a negative critique. It usually means the characters were poorly drawn or that the plot elements fell flat. In animation, sadly, it’s come to mean the same thing. And I think the words “drawn” and “flat” in the previous statement should indicate where I’m going with this.

Before you think me some kind of rabid animation purist, let me get one thing straight. I love the Pixar films. A Bug’s Life, Toy Story, and Ratatouille, this year’s Golden Globe winner for best animated film, are sweetly told, brilliantly rendered and all have a home on my DVD shelf.

I recognize the ingenuity and technical skill that it takes to create the realistic light and shadow in the underwater world of Finding Nemo or the pieces of burned tire skittering on the Cars racetrack. I laud the fact that there are still creative forces out there, searching for new and exciting ways to tell a story. Pixar Animation studios is doing the kind of innovative work with CG that Disney Animation did with hand-drawn back in the 30s and 40s. But they’re also obliterating the audience’s desire for the very techniques upon which their art form is based.

Disney’s recent live-action effort, Enchanted, opens with eight minutes of traditional cel animation. But the sequence that serves as both a launching point for the live-action fairytale and a satiric homage to classic Disney animation wasn’t even produced by Disney animators; it was outsourced to an independent animation team in California. In the late 1990’s, when the wave of computer animated films began, Disney drastically downsized their animation department. So what we’re left with is a Disney movie with an animation sequence created by non-Disney animators. Somewhere, Walt’s “Nine Old Men” are hanging their heads in shame.

Take a look at one of this award season’s critical darlings, Persepolis. Writer-director Marjane Satrapi tells her story using stark, black and white traditional animation. Her autobiographical tale of a rebellious Iranian woman is not lessened by a lack of startling special effects; it’s enhanced by it.

With all respect to John Lasseter, Pete Docter, Brad Bird and their colleagues, they have made careers for themselves by convincing filmgoers that 2-D is dead. Yes, realism in animation is now at levels that were unimaginable a scant five years ago. But why is animation now judged on how realistic that tree looks, or how convincing that rain is on the windowpane? Put simply, the charm and simplicity of 2-D animation still has a place in modern filmmaking.

Go back and re-watch The Little Mermaid. Go even further back, before Disney’s 90s renaissance, and take another look at Peter Pan or Sleeping Beauty. Does a lack of CGI bells and whistles make the stories any less moving? Are the characters not as relatable or as delightful? I know that my nephews and nieces will grow up in a generation that will remember Monsters, Inc. as a classic, but I sincerely hope that they invest some time in my classics, and my parents’.

One of Walt Disney’s famous quotes is: “It all started with a mouse.” More specifically, it all started with one animator, drawing that mouse on a page. Congratulations to Remy, Pixar’s animated rat on the Golden Globe win, but I have to say, if push came to shove, my vote is for the Mouse.