So you took your little brat offspring to see Ratatouille this summer, even though everyone in the liberal conservative media thought a story about the fineries of French living and sophisticated dining would be way over the heads of America's flyover states, who only say the word "French" when it's immediately followed by "fries, onion dip, dip sandwich, & Saunders, are fucking smelly traitors, or, sounds like every other stupid language over there."

Anyway, you took them, and good for you! You all agreed it was one of the best movies of 2007, and now the little tots wander around saying, "Est-ce que vous comprenez l'anglais?" and they refuse to eat anything but food from the local French bistro, which is really fucking expensive, and they really want to see more animated movies about France, but they've already ran through Triplets of Belleville a million times and Asterix and Obelix makes you want to stab yourself in the eyes. Basically they just want something exactly like Ratatouille, which won't be on DVD until Christmas. What do you do?

Peter Pan Publishers has got you covered.

For a mere $7.50 or so, you too can own the finest in Brazilian 3D animation, which is to say that it looks about as amateur and surreal as a high school student's 3D Studio Max final project. Just take a second and really absorb the details of this front cover. Breathe it in!

Now, let's discuss what we learn from just this starting image. Apparently, rat chefs are required to wear chef uniforms, but are free to display their genitals, while everyone else in the kitchen can get away with just being totally nude, save the occasional poofy chef's hat. In fact, the dare-I-say-sexy Brazilian lady rat not only has tan lines and discernible breasts (that will give the kids all kinds of nightmares/fantasies), but her muscle definition and soft pink color makes it look like her furry skin has been ripped off by the angry boss chef to the left of the screen, and she is trying desperately to make her Hostel-esque escape, even with just her fleshy, bloody interiors to run on.

Now, let's move towards the center of the image and focus our attention on Marcell Toing, rat chef to the rat stars. He is presenting us with what I am sure is his signature dish--a giant fucking hunk of cheese--which, if I were a patron of his rat-eraunt (HA!), I would have maybe three or four times before saying, "Yes, yes, giant hunks of cheese are good and all, but what else have you got?" and then Marcell Toing would look at me for a few seconds before biting my leg and giving me rabies. "That's what I got!" he would say, but I wouldn't understand because I'd be swearing and the rat talk is no doubt done in Portuguese anyway since we are in Brazil, after all. I guess I'd just be lucky he didn't literally rip off my skin like Ms. Toing over there. Because I am not averse to great artistic touches, I would also like to draw attention to the magnificent use of highlight sparkle on the edge of the black serving plate and on the rim of the serving top. I just think they missed an opportunity by not adding similar sparkle to the chef's disturbingly toothy grin.

Here is the first introduction of the actual plot of the film, and I think the less said on this count the better. We follow the adventures of the very-Brazilian-named rats Marcell, Carol, and uh, Greg (the worst waiter in town!), as they steal the ingredients needed to make great food, which, now that I think about it, is the exact antithesis of Ratatouille's moralizing, and no doubt imparts a great lesson to impressionable young viewers. The movie is only 44 minutes long, no doubt leaving all kinds of questions unanswered, such as, "Do they escape the cats, rat traps and jealous hordes?" I hear a sequel coming!

As far as I know, "ratatoing" doesn't even mean anything, unless it stands for "copyright violation" in Portuguese. I would also like to know how the title is supposed to be pronounced, given the two dots (RAT EARS!) over the G. Boy, where did those come from? I bet we can all guess...

Like so many other aspects of this film and other knockoffs of its type, Ratatoing is so quick to ape everything that they sacrifice any notion of sense in the process. They didn't even give me a definition of how to phonetically pronounce Ratatoing, which I think is a big loss.

So who dares to put out obviously inferior budget-priced nonsense like this? Credit Peter Pan, a company whose website sells animated films about Jesus, calls Ratatoing "Rationing" in a potentially-revealing slip up, and offers the other following product from the same shoddy Brazilian 3D animation house:

The movie, besides going the extra mile in aping a movie that even a lot of Pixar aficionados couldn't give two shits about, also has a lame and incredibly generalized plot, as described on the back. Wait a second--who the hell is Tony's BOSS? They're Cars (err, cars)!

I also wonder if they found the Brazilian equivalent to Larry the Cable Guy, and if so, what the replacement shtick for his retarded xenophobic hick peeing-in-the-shower-is-heelarious-git-r-done-and-by-done-I-mean-watch-me-kill-and-fart-in-Delta Farce-coming-to-DVD-September-2007 sense of humor is?

There is also a sequel, of which I am too lazy to post the images/mock relentlessly, but I'm sure you can get the gist. Sadly, the same company did not bring you Transmorphers--because they're committed to family programming, dammit!--but I figure I'll post the image anyway, since we are on the subject of incredibly derivative takes on popular Hollywood films.

So who do these kinds of films appeal to? At roughly $7.49 a piece, and available in stores now, I would say the ideal customer falls into three distinct categories:

1. Idiot overeager to get their hands on the real thing, so they think they are buying a bootleg of the real movie when they are in fact buying an entirely different kind of "shitty copy"
2. Blind (so they are fooled by similar sounding titles, and unaware of horrifically inferior cover art)
3. Poor people, to whom a $20 DVD or $10 movie ticket just ain't happening.
4. Brazilians, to whom giant hunks of cheese, naked rats, smiling cars and strangely generic morphing robots are just another day in Rio de Janeiro!

Links:
Ratatoing's official website (no joke)
Ratatoing's English trailer (featuring a number of hilarious bon mots)
Peter Pan's official website (if you go to their sales pages, you can find hidden "fakeoutpages" in the drop-down menu!)
CriterionForum post that was the inspiration for this work, thanks guys!