by Laura Milligan and Mike Wallis
narrated by Spike Milligan
VHS, 30 min.
1992
Sony Kids' Video
P.O. Box 4450
New York, NY 10101
ISBN: 1-56406-633-9
This video is a family favorite! I gave it to my daughter after we first got rats and were looking for some fun kids' entertainment featuring rats in a positive light. The Ratties is a fast-paced series of animated stories about a manic, excitable family of rats who live in a hole in the wall in the house of British entertainer, Danny La Rue. Spike Milligan's narration of his daughter's (?) silly script is fabulous and terribly English. (If you have a hard time with British accents, this may not be the perfect video for you!) It was featured on the cable channel Nickelodeon in the US a few years ago as a series of shorts, I believe.
The Rattie family consists of six members. Aunt Hatty is an obsessively clean rat who is perpetually knitting and doing laundry. Long-suffering Uncle Matty is usually being abused by someone. The ones who abuse him the most are the mischievous twin Fatty brothers who are always getting into trouble. Then there's Tatty, a dreamer who tries desperately to get people to like him so he can be famous. Last there is Baby Batty, a genius break-dancer in a diaper who can do a 15,000 piece puzzle of the Eiffel Tower and make it come out looking like himself!
There are seven parts to this video; each one runs about 5 minutes. The stories are The Budgie, Circus Time, Arty Time, Holiday Time, Glamour Time, Picnic Time and Hawaii Time. My favorite is The Budgie, where Tatty disguises himself as a budgerigar (parakeet) and gets adopted by an elderly lady. While doing a trick called "how to impress your bank manager from a great height," he slips, falls and loses his taped-on wings. Of course then the lady realizes that he's a rat, with predictable results. I also like Glamour Time where the Ratties go on a stair-climbing expedition to investigate Mr. La Rue's dressing room and cosmetics. My daughter loves Hawaii Time, where the Ratties travel via Rattie Airways to Hawaii. They romp around on the beach, causing all sorts of havoc to Uncle Matty and have a yummy barbecue with cheese-sticks and jacket-potatoes.
This is a terribly punny video, which will appeal to pretty much all ages and levels of maturity. Milligan's subtle references to many sophisticated topics will keep adults amused, and younger kids will love the frenzied action (sometimes it's a bit too frenzied, I feel) and silly antics of Baby Batty and the Fatty brothers. And there are always the awful jokes, about which Spike cautions, "Don't try this at home!" All in all it's a cute video and a good choice for kids who like rats. It's refreshing how it gives rats a pretty good rap - almost as good as the ones Baby Batty break-dances to (ba-dum-dum...).
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