Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical

Submission 3,255

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About

Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical is a crowdsourced musical adaptation of the 2006 Pixar animation film Ratatouille made of amateur submissions by TikTokers. Similar to "Shrek Retold," Star Wars Uncut and other Sweded Films, "Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical" compiles clips from a disparate group of people into a coherent narrative.

History

On August 10th, 2020, Emily Jacobsen uploaded an original song to TikTok^[3] about Ratatouille, garnering over 1.1 million views in 5 months (shown below, left). On October 10th she uploaded another Ratatouille themed song to TikTok,^[4] garnering over 67,000 views in 3 months (shown below, right).

On October 19th, TikToker @danieljmertzlufft shared a video to Jacobsen's song with additional instruments and vocals by TikToker cjaskier, titled "Remy: The Musical OG Song."^[5] The post received more than 2.4 million views, 156,000 reactions and 3,400 comments in less than one month (shown below).

Over the next week, the video and the song from the video continued to spread on the platform. On October 25th, 2020, the TikTok account @ratatouillemusical posted a call for submissions for a fully-produced musical compiled from people on TikTok.^[6] The video received more than 1 million, views, 235,000 likes and 5,800 comments in less than one months (shown below, left). On October 27th, @ratatouillemusical posted an enthusiastic update,^[7] garnering over 620,000 views in 2 months (shown below, right). The project has since gone quiet, with no further updates following a December 9th post reacting to the announcement of the official Ratatouille: The TikTok musical.^[8] On November 16th, the Daily Dot^[2] published an article on the musical.

As of January 2021, the hashtag ^[1] #ratatouillemusical received more than 225.4 million views. The tag archives submissions for the musical, including songs, set design, and calls for collaboration (examples below, left, center, and right).

On December 6th, BuzzFeed posted a video to YouTube^[11] interviewing Emily Jacobsen and a number of other notable #ratatouillemusical accounts about the Ratatouille musical (shown below). In the video, Jacobsen describes how reading about the new Ratatouille ride coming to Disney World got her thinking about the film, and the song came to her naturally from there.

Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical Live

On December 9th, 2020, ratatousicalmusical posted their first video to TikTok,^[9] announcing that Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical would become an official production to be streamed one night only on January 1st, with tickets going for $5 US and all the proceeds benefiting The Actors Fund. It was produced by Seaview Productions in partnership with TikTok, and featured videos, songs, performances, etc. from creators under the #ratatouillemusical hashtag. The production also featured performances by notable celebrities and Broadway stars, including Tituss Burgess as Remy, Wayne Brady as Django, Adam Lambert as Emile, Andrew Barth Feldman as Alfredo Linguini, Ashley Park as Colette, Andre de Shields as Anton Ego, Kevin Chamberlin as Auguste Gusteau, Mary Testa as Chef Skinner, and Priscilla Lopez as Mabel. On December 9th, The Verge^[10] published an article announcing this. On December 10th they posted an advertisement featuring reactions from the community to the announcement of the musical, garnering over 3.8 million views in under a month (shown below, left). On December 14th, the account posted a compilation of people reacting to their order confirmations fro the tickets, garnering over 5 million views in a comparable span of time (shown below, right).

Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical received significant press coverage following its announcement, including pieces from TIME,^[12] and EW.^[13] On January 1st, Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical became available to air for ticketholders.

Reception

On January 1st, opening day, Twitter users began posting memes and reactions referring to Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical. On that day, sdurso5 tweeted,^[19] "Every time there's a song I heard from TikTok" and an image of Pointing Rick Dalton garnering over 1,700 likes in 3 days (shown below, left). On the same day, ashleyhufford tweeted^[20] praise for the casting of Linguini, garnering over 720 likes in the same span of time (shown below, right).

On January 2nd, Deadline^[14] published an article announcing that Ratatouille: The TikTok Musical raised over $1 million for The Actors Fund through ticket sales. On the same day, Peter Marks published a mostly positive review to The Washington Post.^[17] On the same day, Amy Lovatt posted a positive review of the musical to YouTube, saying she loved it but noting that she's not sure if it could go to Broadway, garnering over 20,000 views in 2 days (shown below, left). On January 3rd, Jesse Green posted a positive review to The New York Times^[18] website. The Week I Review posted a positive review to YouTube on January 4th, noting that it lacks some of the magic of the #RatatouilleMusical hashtag, but is a very enjoyable experience regardless, awarding it a 7.9/10 (shown below, right).