Your Friend the Rat – Your Friend the Rat (2007)

Directed by: Jim Capobianco | 11 minutes | animation, short film | Original voice cast: Patton Oswalt, Peter Sohn, Lou Romano, Tony Russel, Sigmund Vik, Jim Capobianco, John Ratzenberger

With the exception of the animal lovers who have them as pets, not many people will be happy with the presence of a rat in their home environment. Even the amiable rat Remi from Pixar’s animation film ‘Ratatouille’ can’t change that. Nevertheless, the kitchen prince takes it up again for his breed in ‘Your Friend the Rat’, a Pixar short that was released as an extra on the DVD of ‘Ratatouille’ and with the release of the Pixar Short Films Collection Volume 2, where the film can also be found on, is once again put in the spotlight.

‘Your Friend the Rat’ is inspired by the educational films that Disney made in the 1950s. Because a lot of research had been done on rats during the preparation of ‘Ratatouille’, director Jim Capobianco (who wrote the story of ‘Ratatouille’) was pretty much an expert on rats. He wanted to use that information for an entertaining film, in which the history of the rat is explained in a not so serious way. That works very nicely. ‘Your Friend the Rat’ is above all a fantastic showcase of the techniques that the animation studio has mastered. It is a visually very varied film, using a lot of different animation techniques, such as 2D, computer animation, hand-drawn animations, stop motion, collages and even a comic 8-bit video game-like scene. The disclaimer at the end is very funny.

Furthermore, the humor isn’t over the top, it’s mainly in the small visual finds. All this probably makes ‘Your Friend the Rat’ not very popular with younger viewers, who may be hoping for an extra adventure from Remy and his voracious brother Emile. But enthusiasts with an interest in the technical side of animation can have fun with these cleverly made Pixar shorts.