Hey folks. Capone in Chicago here.

Director Brad Bird has single handedly made it impossible to lump all Pixar movies into one category. Sure, Pixar works are all varying degrees of great, but with his last film, THE INCREDIBLES, Bird took the kid-centric animation house and allowed older kids and adults into the fold a little easier. In fact, it almost seems that he's more concerned with appealing to a slightly older crowd by populating all his films (including his first, THE IRON GIANT) with almost entirely human characters. I'm sure kids will find a whole lot to love about Bird's latest, RATATOUILLE. The images and energy are as strong as anything the Pixar crew has done to this point. But beyond that, the story about a rat living Paris who is obsessed with eating and creating fine cuisine is clearly a theme that adults can embrace and get the most out of in terms of the full movie-going experience. Even the idea that a character would dream of living in Paris just for the food is something that might not make the most sense to an 8-year-old, but I've been there.

RATATOUILLE's star is a rat named Remy (voiced by stand-up comic Patton Oswalt), who seems all-too willing to leave his comfortable rat colony family (including his father, voiced by Brian Dennehy) and life of rummaging for garbage to eat. What he wants more than anything is to create meals like those in the cookbook of his hero, renowned French chef Auguste Gusteau (Brad Garrett), whose theory about cooking is "Anyone can cook." After his rat hive is forced to leave their cozy confines, Remy finds himself swept away in the local sewer system only to pop up in the heart of downtown Paris, directly in front of Gusteau's famed restaurant. Although Gusteau has recently passed away, that doesn't stop the ghost of the great chef (or at least a figment of Remy's imagination) from advising Remy on his life choices from time to time.

Around the time of Remy's arrival in the kitchen of Gusteau's dining establishment, a young man named Linguini (Lou Romano) also arrives looking for a job in the kitchen. It's clear early on that the man in charge, a little Napoleon of a dictator named Skinner (Ian Holm), is a right bastard, but he hires Linguini as a garbage boy and dishwasher. It doesn't take long for Linguini and Remy to find each other, and the pair form an unlikely alliance as Remy's skills as a cook (driven primarily by his heightened sense of smell) are put to use with Linguini as his hands. Remy literally lives under Linguini's hat and directs his actions like a puppet by tugging on certain strands of hair.

There are several dramas building up heads of steam at the same time in RATATOUILLE, some more welcome than others. Linguini develops a sweet crush on fellow chef Colette (voiced almost unrecognizably by Janeane Garofalo), but his Remy-driven creations actually threaten her getting a promotion in the kitchen; Skinner suspects Remy's creations are rat inspired; Remy's family discovers his whereabouts and show up on the restaurant's doorstep looking for food; the ownership of the restaurant is in jeopardy; and a terrifying food critic (and one-time enemy of Gusteau) has decided to pay a return visit to the establishment, which has been generating buzz in town thanks to a certain new chef. The food critics name is Anton Ego, and thanks to a downright evil voice provided by Peter O'Toole, he might be my favorite Pixar character ever. O'Toole lends an almost Vincent Price quality to his performance; Ego belongs in whatever the next Tim Burton animated film might be. But the only thing more inspired than how nasty the man can be is his character's brief but complete story arc. And his reaction to his first bite of Remy's cooking is funnier than anything I've seen in ages.

It should almost go without saying that the attention to detail in the animation style is flawless. People are going to go on about how perfectly the Remy's hair is rendered, but I also loved the way he looked after getting wet, that sort of sheen that wet rats get. I also liked that technically Remy and his fellow rats are not talking animals. They understand each other (as do we), but to the human characters, all they hear are squeaks. But more than anything the lessons learned in RATATOUILLE are well worth the extended running time. This is film about accepting who you are, never forgetting where you come from, and staying true to your calling. This is easily one of my top three favorite Pixar films, and I promise you will eat this one up as well.

And in case you hadn't heard, as a little Pixar bonus, RATATOUILLE is prefaced by the studio's Oscar-nominated short LIFTED, a funny little nugget about a pair of extraterrestrials attempting to use a tractor beam to take a man from his bed without waking him. You'll never think of alien abductions quite the same again.

Capone