But in my opinion, this score for Ratatouille was the point where Giacchino began to establish his own definitive sound through his composing, and as such I mark it as his real breakthrough point, the springboard from which he gained enough notoriety to secure the projects that became his calling cards – Star Trek and Up (which you will undoubtedly see reviews for in the future). For 2004’s The Incredibles, he basically became John Barry (when John Barry was unavailable to score it himself). For the various war-based video games he scored (the original Medal of Honour and Call of Duty, to name a couple) he wrote as John Williams had done for Saving Private Ryan. Giacchino had been working in the industry since 1995, and for the most part of his early career he had essentially worked in the style of other, more famous composers. Yet, even now, 10 years on, the soundtrack is one of my favourites for an animated film. Ratatouille may have been released in 2007 (and honestly I can’t remember when we started owning the DVD), but I became aware of the soundtrack only in 2014. Technically speaking the film was flawlessly animated, pretty excellently cast, and had moments of real drama, comedy, and magic – all in all, par for the course for a Pixar movie! But the real heart of the film was in the soundtrack, composed by the amazing Michael Giacchino. All heart with very little time for explaining the rules of human-rat relationships, this film was one of the few I owned on DVD and watched tons on long journeys etc., as a result, I grew to really love it. Disney Pixar served up a right royal treat in 2007 with their film Ratatouille, centered around the adventures of the little french rat Remy (Patton Oswalt), who (to quote the film’s tagline) is “dying to be a chef”, and is finally given the opportunity to show off his natural talent for tasty dishes when he runs into Linguini (Lou Romano), a hapless cleaner in a top-rated Parisian restaurant, and through an unlikely partnership, the two become the finest secret chef duo in all of France.

Ratatouille original soundtrack