TL;DR:
TikTok made a musical, it's surprisingly good, donate to The Actor's Fund
UPDATE: My brother has said that my comments re Six: The Musical are going to cause offence. I disagreed, but I relented anyway and added some positive stuff to balance it out.
So to explain this, we first need to do a bit of history. This trend started on TikTok.
If you don't know what TikTok is, click this link for a quick explanation. Not detailed enough? Try this. Still don't get it? Try this (warning: lower quality).
OK, jokes aside, it's like Vine if Vine was... again. And slightly longer.
This story has four main sections, which I will explain below:
Part 1 - The Birth
So it started with one video. On August 11 2020, 26-year-old teacher Emily Jacobsen (I'm not sure how big she is on TikTok (see above), but I can't find her on YouTube) heard about Ratatouille: The Ride being launched; then started singing to herself:
Remy, the ratatouille,
The rat of all my dreams,
I praise you, my ratatouille
May the world remember your name
She then pitch-shifted it to sound more 'cartoony' (read: Chipmunks) and uploaded it to TikTok, expecting it to go no further. Which it did. For a while.
On 10 October Internet Creator Brittany Broski posted a video on her TikTok featuring Jacobsen's music with footage of her [Brittany] dancing side-by-side with some footage of Remy dancing at Disneyworld.
On 20 October, Daniel Mertzlufft, a proper theatre composer, found it and made a more theatrical/orchestrated version, which he then posted.
Source for above
Part 2 - The Afterbirth
This is where the history gets a little fuzzy. After Brittany's video, thousands of people became aware of it, and started creating more content for the trend which by now was big enough to actually become a musical.
In addition to all the wannabe songwriters (no offence; I also count myself as an amateur), there were professionals getting involved as well, from all areas of the industry. Before too long, there were
Choreographers
Costume designers
Set designers
Stagehands?!
Performers (in this case, none of the terms actor/musician/songwriter/singer seems right on its own)
↑ Remember him. he'll be back later.
Makeup Artists
Lighting Designers
Merch Designers/Makers?!
Lin-Manuel Miranda's Double
Logo Designers
involved. Of course, there are other examples of all the above, but listing them all would take hours.
Special thanks to this compilation video, which helped me locate most of these.
Part 3 - The Snowball Effect
For those of you who don't remember, Vine had a severe shortcoming, namely: Each video could only be seven seconds long. Now TikTok has the same problem, except slightly less. Each video is allowed to be up to 15 seconds long, but users are allowed to link up to four videos together. I don't know why they can't just say videos can be one minute, but there you go.
So who should join the party but our old friend YouTube, which doesn't have a limit on the maximum length of videos (don't believe me? Click the 4th link in this review).
This video was released, which was how I found out about it. Recognise her but you're not sure where from? She's best known for her Google Translate videos, where she translates song lyrics and more recently other things as well through several layers of Google Translate and back into English.
As far as I can tell, Malinda was and is the only person who fully planned out the entire story and where songs would go, as well as compiling some of the best TikToks. She also came up with the idea to have Gusteau as the narrator, an idea that was not included in the full version. Get
Even if by this point in the blog you haven't clicked on any of the links, you still should have seen the transcript of Emily Jacobsen's original song, and you may have spotted the problem with it, specifically the first line:
Remy, the ratatouille,
It may have occurred to you that Remy is
not a ratatouille, he is a
rat. Of course, the internet pointed this out, so
Emily posted another video explaining how that song could still work. In a nutshell, after Remy starts working at the kitchen, his dad writes that song for him. Remy tries to explain the problem to him, but he doesn't understand, and Remy's mother just tells Remy to humour his dad.
In case you were wondering if the original Ratatouille (The Movie) makers were on board with this, yes they are:
Source: https://www.insider.com/ratatouille-the-musical-tiktok-remy-2020-11
Part 4 - The Rebirth
After mid-November, the fad slowed down, and it seemed like the meme was dead. Then, on December 9th,
this happened (Yes, by this point it had its own Twitter account!)
Missed it/Didn't buy a ticket/This seemingly neverending blog is the first you've heard about it? Not a problem. You can view the full show on YouTube
using this link.
Want to skip to your favourite bit?
Timestamps:
1:42 Intro - Emily Jacobsen
3:53 Overture - The Broadway Sinfonietta
5:14 Title
6:11 Anyone Can Cook - Gusteau
10:21 Trash is our Treasure - Django
15:52 I knew I Smelled a Rat (Prologue) - Mabel
18:47 Remember My Name - Remy
24:38 Anyone Can Cook (Reprise) - Linguini
27:58 Kitchen Tango - Colette and Linguini
33:44 The Rat's Way of Life - Emile and Chorus
41:01 I Knew I Smelled a Rat - Skinner
45:31 Ratatouille - Ego
49:34 Finale - Cast
51:21 Ratamix/Curtain Call - Cast/Creatives
53:46 Closing Music - The Broadway Sinfonietta
This word is not pronounced how you'd think ↑
54:41 Other - Emily Jacobsen
54:46 Credits
[the timestamps are also in the video description but there are a couple of errors. Above is correct as far as I can tell]
ERROR: This section of the post has been unexpectedly terminated because I couldn’t think of anything else to say
Part 5 - Where Do I Come In?
Part 6 - Bonus Material
You may have noticed that during several of the dance numbers, each screen contained three people who look suspiciously similar. No, TikTok isn't a social network meant only for identical triplets (that would be a very exclusive social network); it's just that it has a cool 'triple effect' function which can triplicate people in videos. (for example, at 43:20 there are 9 dancers onscreen but only two people playing them)
If you pause at 55:57 you will notice that six people are credited as 'Rat Queen' (Adrianna Hicks, Nicole Lambert, Andrea Macasaet, Brittney Mack, Mallory Maedke and Abby Mueller).
Now if the story of Dick Whittington taught us anything (and let's face it,
most of the story that we know and love is inaccurate), it's that rats live in a monarchy. Each mischief of rats (
look it up) has a leader, the Rat King. It therefore logically follows that the King's partner would be a Rat Queen. But if there's six of them, are they all Queens?
I don't think it's explicitly stated in the movie, but it's implied that Django (Remy's dad) is the leader of the rats. Of course, that wouldn't necessarily make him the King.
Various sources state that Ratatouille takes place in the 1950s (based on technology and vehicles), the 1960s (based on Ego's wine, labelled '61), the 1980's (based on the use of DNA testing) or the 2000s (based on Gusteau's will, dated 2004). In any of these cases, the only thing that matters (for our use) is whether or not France is a monarchy. France has been a Republic since 1792 (or possibly 1958, depending on how you measure it). That would make Django a Rat Président, and therefore his partner would not be a queen.
FUN FACT: You just read all of that, and none of it matters. The reason they are called Rat Queens is that they are the main cast of the musical Six. For those of you who don't know, Six is a musical about the wives of Henry VIII, because apparently, that's a thing that the world needed. Then again, I said the same about Hamilton, and I was very wrong about that.
4.9 out of 5 stars for a chair is fantastic! And if the chairs are getting that high praise, just imagine how good the show is! Sellout tickets in multiple locations worldwide can't be wrong!
But why is that relevant? Remember I said that a lot of the creatives behind Ratatousical are professionals? Well, it was directed by Lucy Moss, a Broadway director who is best known as the director/writer of Six.
Bonus Six material! Sorry, they seem to have hijacked this post. Remember May 2019 when Catherine of Aragon started trending, and no one could work out why, meaning people kept tweeting about not knowing why she was trending and creating a chicken-and-egg situation? Some of my favourite theories were:
- She's died [Love to her family at this time]
- It's her birthday [ruled out; her birthday was 16 December and this was May]
- She's on the next series of Love Island [Fair play for securing such a big name]
- She's running for Tory leadership
This musical references lots of other Broadway musicals, both past and present. Below is an incomplete list:
7:06 Sweeney Todd Reference
7:45 Chorusline Reference 1
13:56 Rent Reference (one of the least subtle references in anything, ever (and that's coming from a guy who wrote a play which stole so much material it had a full bibliography with Harvard References at the end))
14:57 Chorusline Reference 2
15:51 Chorusline Reference 3
18:52-22:15 Wicked Reference
24:39-26:26 References to You And Me (But Mostly Me) - The Book of Mormon and The Wizard and I - Wicked
39:00 Les Miserables Reference
36:30 Six Reference 1 (You might need to pause to see this one properly)
51:26 Six Reference 2
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj6Wl8SFekw
Look in the comments (of the video) to see some of the other references
People who complained that Ratatousical wasn't performed at Joe Biden's Presidential Inauguration?
Check this out.
Want to sing along while you watch but don't know the words?
Lyrics here
In addition to being a talented songwriter, Gabbi Bolt (writer, Trash is our Treasure) also produces short comedy videos. Check out:
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