If there’s a big animated film coming out, a studio somewhere will be rushing to release a cheap imitation. But who makes them? Are they proud of their work? And how did they become an internet hit?
It is hard to describe what happens 24 minutes into Ratatoing, an animated children’s movie from 2007. Four unnerving rats – one with a handlebar moustache, another in pearls – begin to jump up and down and grunt in a restaurant, in order to alarm the human clientele. “La, la, la, la, la,” they sort of sing while sort of dancing. They then do the can-can and shout “HA, HA, HA!” before making ghostly noises. Ratatoing is not, it is safe to say, a good movie. It is barely even an acceptable movie. It was created in just four months by Brazilian animation studio Vídeo Brinquedo, to be released in the same month as Ratatouille, the restaurant-and-rat-themed film that went on to win Pixar the Oscar for best animated feature.
“I don’t have regrets but I’m not proud of it,” says Ale McHaddo, one of Ratatoing’s producers. He says Vídeo Brinquedo had a budget of just £75,000 to script, cast, animate and score each movie he worked on. These included The Little Cars (released the same year as Pixar’s Cars) and Little Bee (released two years after DreamWorks’ Bee Movie). Ratatouille’s budget, by comparison, was £112m. “I was young and needed to produce some films,” says the 37-year-old from São Paulo. “I thought, ‘I have plenty of ideas – but OK, I need to pay my bills.’”
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