Ratatouille: Pixar’s eighth movie and a favorite of many. The story centers around
a rat named Remy, who desires to become a great chef despite the fact that the cooking industry
is rodent-phobic. When Gusteau’s son, Linguini, accidentally spills some of the soup and attempts
to recreate it without any knowledge of cooking, Remy comes in to fix the soup. From then on,
Remy and Linguini team up to keep up the success of cooking food at Gusteau’s Restaurant thanks to
Remy’s talented cooking abilities. As long as he remains under Linguini’s hat to keep
from getting caught. But the question remains, who is the most good? And who is the most evil?
I’m Rachel with WickedBinge, and this is Ratatouille: Good to Evil.
As usual, we’ll be starting with the good characters and then work our way down.
The gold medal for most good goes to the late Auguste Gusteau, the extremely talented chef
who founded his own restaurant and wrote his own book called “Anyone Can Cook.” Gusteau
was a jovial and kind-hearted man who wanted nothing more than to inspire others as a chef.
He also plays a big role in Remy’s story arc. Not only as his idol but as his conscience
too. He has acted as a voice of reason many times towards Remy and will call him out on his actions
when necessary. For example, when Remy attempts to eat a piece of bread at a party in Paris, Gusteau
tells him that “a cook makes, a thief takes.” He also calls out Remy when he first sneaks in
the kitchen to steal food for his clan when it could get Linguini in huge trouble. When Remy
gets captured by Skinner, Gusteau reminds him that he doesn’t need to pretend to be anyone else and
never had to. Which was a great word of advice. The silver medal goes to Remy’s big brother Emile.
Emile is friendly, understanding, and supportive of Remy. Throughout the beginning of the movie,
Emile was the only rat who knew about his cooking, TV watching, and reading. However,
he ended up carelessly telling his friends about Remy’s activities inside Gusteau’s, which he was
specifically told not to do. Especially since it led to the rat clan getting caught by Linguini
for stealing food from the kitchen. Despite that setback, Emile comes through for Remy
whenever he needs his big brother. For example, when Remy gets captured by Skinner, Emile gets
their dad to save him from the limousine. Along with the rest of the rat colony, he also helps
Remy prepare the ratatouille for Anton Ego. The bronze medal goes to Gusteau’s son:
Alfredo Linguini. Linguini is an unsure and clumsy garbage boy when he is first introduced.
He is also somewhat naive and trusts others too easily. For example, when Skinner invited him to
drink wine together, Linguini failed to grasp onto the fact that Skinner was trying to get him drunk
in order to get him to talk about Remy. However, what puts him high on the list is that he is very
friendly and kind hearted. He doesn’t drown Remy after he was ordered by Skinner to get rid of him.
Despite initially holding distrust of Remy when they became acquaintances, his trust with him
deepens the closer they become. His kindness also shows when he lets Remy stay in his home,
gives him food in the pantry when noticing that he is hungry, and he also thanks Colette for helping
him instead of complaining about her training being hard. This shows how Linguini is the kind
of person to never show ill will to anyone. Now let’s move onto our tiny protagonist:
Remy. Remy is known to be an unconventional rat because of his love for food and its quality,
or as he says, “the good stuff.” Because of his strong sense of smell, he was able to save his
father from eating a poisoned apple core. After meeting and teaming up with Linguini,
he stumbles upon hidden documents connected to Linguini, which he then proceeds to risk his own
life to bring the documents to Linguini. Thanks to Remy, Linguini takes control as the rightful owner
of the restaurant and becomes a grand success with the help of his cooking abilities. However,
Remy doesn’t always think about the consequences of his actions. When Linguini credits his talents
to Colette, the duo get into a disagreement about it. In retaliation, Remy lets his family raid the
kitchen one night, only to end up getting thrown out when Linguini discovers them.
Despite that, Remy does have good intentions and doesn’t give up easily. He gets his family to
help him cook ratatouille for Ego, resulting in him to be very impressed with the dish.
Behind Remy and Emile is their dad and leader of the rat colony: Django. Unlike Remy,
Django initially didn’t believe that humans and rats would ever get along due to the ongoing
nature of humans looking down on rats. After finding out that Remy has been close to humans,
Django brings him to an extermination shop with dead rats hanging on a bar. Despite how hard he
is to his youngest son, he acts the way he does to protect him from getting hurt by humans.
Especially if it meant showing him that shop. However, near the end of the movie, Django finally
sees Remy’s passion and determination to cook, and realizes that humans aren’t that bad. He rounds up
the rat colony to help out Remy in the kitchen and lock up Skinner and the health inspector into the
storeroom when they try to interfere. This shows how Django has a change of heart for the better.
Rounding up the Good characters is Mustafa, the waiter of Gusteau’s. Mustafa easily gets nervous
when dealing with demanding customers and critics, especially Ego. But at the end of the day,
he is just doing his job. No matter how difficult it can be to deal with customers,
he doesn’t feel the need to complain about it. With that said, we’ve wrapped up the Good
characters. Let’s move into the neutral territory. This is the Grey Area.
Starting off the Grey Area are three of Gusteau’s chefs: Horst, Lalo, and Larouss. There is not
a whole lot to say about them since we only know anything about them because of Colette
briefly recalling their strange backstories. They aid Linguini when he takes ownership of
the restaurant. For example, Horst uses his thumb to kick Skinner off the premises when
he catches him spying on Linguini and Colette. However, they don’t stand by his side for very
long after they find out that Remy is the real chef behind the clumsy fool. They quit the
restaurant along with the rest of the employees. Up next is Colette. Colette is the only woman
in the kitchen, who is assertive and opinionated, especially when it comes to cooking. She defended
Linguini from almost getting fired after the soup was served successfully on accident thanks
to Remy. However, when she is forced to train Linguini, she is brutal and harsh in doing so. At
one point, she becomes angry and envious when he gets attention from Skinner. Despite how negative
she felt about it, she admits that she likes Linguini and really wants him to succeed. Even
after leaving the restaurant due to the revelation that Remy has been the real cook, she remembers
Gusteau’s motto: “Anyone can cook” and comes back to aid Remy and Linguini in the cooking.
Now we have the Health Inspector. The Health Inspector only appears once in the movie,
attempting to interfere with the rat colony’s plan to prepare a dish for Ego. After being released,
he eventually gets the word out that rats were in the kitchen, causing Gusteau’s to be
closed down for good. Despite that the Health Inspector’s interference has affected Ego’s
credibility as a critic, it all came down to the fact that he was just doing his job.
The greyest character, literally and metaphorically, is no other than Anton
Ego. Ego is a restaurant critic who is extremely passionate about food. His negative review led
to Gusteau’s five-star restaurant downgraded to four stars. When he initially rejected the
belief that “anyone can cook,” it eventually led to Gusteau’s death before the events of the film.
Despite how terrifying Ego’s demeanor is, he means what he says out of constructive criticism. Also,
believe it or not, Ego does have a soft spot. When he takes a bite of the ratatouille cooked by Remy,
he enjoys it so much that it takes him back to a simpler time when his mom would cook
for him as a child. When Ego finally sees that Remy was the one who cooked the food,
he finally realizes what Gusteau meant when he said that “anyone can cook.” While not everyone
can be an artist, true talent can be found in the most unusual place when we least expect it.
After losing his job and credibility as a critic, he became happier and successful
as a small business investor and regular patron of La Ratatouille. Unlike most Disney
villains who refuse to change their ways, we can definitely say that Ego changed for the better.
Lastly, we have Talon Labarthe, Skinner’s lawyer. Labarthe is only shown to be siding with Skinner
while discussing the documents that reveal the fact that Linguini is Gusteau’s son. However,
the advice that Labarthe gives Skinner in the heat of the situation is shady. He advises him to wait
out the will’s two-year deadline and then fire Linguini so that no one will ever know about it.
Now onto the final category we’ve all been waiting for:
the Bad and the Evil. The second to most evil title goes to Mabel,
the elderly homeowner from the beginning of the movie. Despite that Mabel would not exactly be
considered evil, given the fact that it is common for most humans to be scared of rats,
she is ranked very low for attempting to kill the rat colony with her shotgun.
To make matters worse, she kept trying to shoot at them even after they already evacuated her home.
Which causes Remy to be separated from his family for a while after getting swept in the sewers. But
at the very least, we can definitely say that if it wasn’t for Mabel, Remy would have been
led to a very different path to self-discovery. To no one’s surprise, the most evil medal goes to
Chef Skinner. Skinner became the head of Gusteau’s Restaurant shortly after Gusteau’s death. However,
he did not hold Gusteau’s interests in the highest regard. He only cared about earning profit from
his line of Chef Gusteau’s Frozen Foods to maintain the restaurant’s financial status.
There was always one-sided rivalry when it came to Skinner’s relationship with Linguini. Especially
when it came down to the discovery that Linguini is Gusteau’s son and the rightful owner of the
restaurant. For example, due to his suspicion that Linguini is scheming in the kitchen,
Skinner invites him into the office to get him drunk in order to get him to spill the beans
on his so-called “talent.” Then after finding out that Remy is the cook, he attempts to get
revenge on both of them by capturing Remy and intending to force him to create a line
of frozen foods in exchange for not killing him. That wraps up the list! Who do you think are the
most good and evil characters of Ratatouille? Let us know in the comment section below. Don’t
forget to hit that notification bell and binge our Good-to-Evil playlist -- where we break down the
morality of the characters on your favorite shows and movies. But most importantly, stay wicked!