Ratatouille

An animated film set in Paris. Remy is a rat and can cook. His sense of smell works differently from the rest of his family and he refuses to eat rubbish. He is separated from them during a flood and finds himself in Paris, above the kitchen of a famous restaurant. Linguini cleans in that kitchen. He knows nothing about food and ruins a soup. Remy saves the soup. Nobody sees, and the credit goes to Linguini. From there the film is a secret partnership. The rat gets under the hat, steers the boy like a puppet by his hair, and the kitchen gets back on its feet. What the narrative is interested in is not food but origin: the sentence at the centre of the film says not that anyone can be an artist but that an artist can come from anywhere, and the difference between the two is stated plainly at the end. The critic is the best written part of the narrative. His piece in the final section is unexpectedly serious for an animated film. The moment a plate of food takes a man back to his childhood is built in a single cut and is the most loved scene in it. The team worked in Paris at length for the production; they trained in real kitchens and drew the preparation of food from direct observation. The rats' fur and the movement of water were the hardest technical work the studio had faced at the time. The film won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Patton Oswalt, Lou Romano, Ian Holm, Janeane Garofalo and Peter O'Toole are among the voices. Brad Bird directed. Who it is for: any age; the film works for children and adults alike. Who it is not for: anyone genuinely disturbed by rats; there are hundreds of them in the kitchen.