Like most students at this university, I have my fair share of dealing with rodents: by the bins or on my Hinge, they seem to be all over. Mouse, rats, guinea pigs and squirrels, they’re everywhere, whether you want them to be or not, and yet they manage to always be somewhere in pop culture. With last year’s trend of the ‘hot rodent boyfriend’, maybe Hollywood needs to call pest control?
The first main rodent feature is arguably Stuart Little (1999), a mouse in an orphanage, who gets adopted by a New York family, an insane sentence to say out loud. Stuart Little seems to be one of the least liked in the rodent filmography, with many one-star reviews detailing people’s wishes to throw hands with this anthropomorphic mouse. Despite its mixed critical reception, it miraculously got not only a TV show spin-off, but two theatrical sequels, though thankfully, Stuart Little has remained a relic of the past.
My childhood, however, contained a stretch of seven (yes, seven) movies in five years, all involving some form of rodent; for some reason, Hollywood decided all kids’ films needed to be rodent-centric. We had Flushed Away (2006), Alvin and the Chipmunks (2007), Ratatouille (2007), The Tale of Despereaux (2008), Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (2009), G-Force (2009), and Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked (2011).
Even the untrained eye can see that one of these films stands out: Brad Bird’s iconic film about a rat who loves to cook, Ratatouille, is a film more for adults than kids; its message of ambition shines through Remy and his love of cooking. Even 18 years on, it still stands the test of time; the other films, however, do not. Though my flatmates adore the occasional chipmunk movie, those high-pitched voices would probably give my parents PTSD and those random ‘chipmunk covers’ all over YouTube will haunt many a millennial and Gen Z until the day they die. They somehow even managed a fourth sequel in 2015, but thankfully, that’s the last we heard of these annoying creatures. Flushed Away is a firm guilty pleasure of mine, the main Hugh Jackman rat Roddy (based on Matty Healy of all people) goes against the evil Ian McKellen frog to the soundtrack of Tom Jones and Tina Turner. Who is directing these movies, and what drugs are they on?
At the end of the day, rodents are pests and stick around a lot longer than they should, but most are harmless and fun to take the occasional picture of (just ask my parents about the number of squirrel photos they get). The same can be said about these various films, rats or chipmunks, regardless, these movies hold a place in all of our childhoods.