Ratatouille (2007) IMDb
Anyone can cook or write Broadway-worthy musical numbers, as demonstrated by TikTok users around the world. Based on the beloved Pixar film
Ratatouille (2007),
Ratatouille the Musical became one of the most popular memes of 2020. With the COVID-19 pandemic closing Broadway and keeping everyone at home, many people indulged in escapism by contributing to a wild thought experiment: what if
Ratatouille was a musical? From that question came one of the weirdest examples of collaboration produced by the Internet, with fans composing and designing everything for this imagined musical, such as original songs, choreographies, set designs, and even costumes.
The Road To
But how did we get here? In August 2020, TikTok user
Emily Jacobsen (@e jaccs) posted a short song, “Ode to Remy” a quick soundbite of her musical praise for
Ratatouille’s rodent hero
. Then,
Daniel J. Mertzlufft (@danieljmertzlufft) posted an ensemble version of the song, envisioned as an end-of-Act-II showstopper à la the finale of
The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Over the next few months, heaps of videos buoyed the
Ratatouille: The Musical meme. Additional songs came from TikTok users like
RJ Christian (@rjthecomposer) as well as theater performers, such as
Dear Evan Hansen’s
The Prom star