The latest Ratatouille trailer for American audiences is out and whaddya know…they managed to keep the relationship throughline in there. It’s ready to view either on Disney.com in HiRes or here in LowRes YouTube fashion. They score a big 5 out of 5 for creating a compelling and gorgeous trailer that has just enough in there to entice audiences into theaters this summer.

As mentioned in my my post about the Asian trailer for Ratatouille, you do have a greater emphasis here on the broad slapstick comedy of the Objective Story. But unlike the trailers most other animation studios put out, this one still retains the heart of the Subjective Story - the relationship between the boy cook and the rat.

It’s not all sight gags and fart jokes.

A great balance among all four throughlines

Instead, you get a nice overall introduction to all the players - from the boy who wants to be a great cook (Protagonist) to the evil executive chef (Antagonist) who wants the rat destroyed. Because it’s a children film we can pretty much guess the outcome, but the comedy looks clever enough to hold the attention of any adult.

And that comedy seems to flow nicely into the relationship between the boy and the rat - the classic Obi-Wan/blast shield down motif of the teacher blinding the student plays nicely as the rat instructs the boy how to create masterpieces. Like Luke, I’m sure the boy’s heretofore buried instincts are allowed to rise to the surface in order to save the day. But unlike Star Wars, this time we’re being told the story of the mentor.

From what I can gather, the rat is the Main Character with his impossible dreams of becoming a great French chef. This dovetails nicely with the Impact Character Throughline as it appears the Impact Character (the boy) shares the same dream. There’s not a whole lot here, but safe to say there will be some “You and I are alike” line delivered somewhere.

It still doesn’t have as much emphasis on their relationship as the Asian trailer did, and therefore comes off as having less heart. But there is enough hinted at here that one still feels compelled to go see this movie. They haven’t given us so much as to make the trip to the theater pointless, and they haven’t skimped so much that we have no idea what to expect. Personally I find it a great balance among all four throughlines - perfectly tuned for a Western audience.

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