When Remy (Patton Oswalt), a peculiar rat with a talent for cooking and a resentment for his fellow kind, runs into Linguini (Lou Romano), a down on his luck garbage boy in a 5 3 star restaurant, the two form an extraordinary pact - the man can be the hands and the rat can cook the food. Now they have to keep the restaurant going while trying to catch the eye of fellow cook Colette (Janeane Garofalo), tackling famous food critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole) and avoiding the watchful eyes of scheming chef Skinner (Ian Holm).
Toys, Robots, Cars and now Rats. Although this film can not be called a terrible waste of time, it is difficult to define what was so good about it. The animation was very entertaining in portraying both the characters and the world of the busy streets of Paris. The Rats especially were very well designed, by not only living up to Pixar's adorable characters individually but also matching realistic levels of repulsion en masse. The divide between rats and humans is also cleverly set out by numerous boundaries (it isn't another human talking to animals and vice versa...sort of).
That being said, there are a number of things about the film as a whole that let itself down. The story is predictable as is everything about the narrative. Also many of the voice cast let the unfortunate american accent slip in spite of their French characters and even those that aren't don't live up to their usual star performances.
All in all, Ratatouille probably can't be called 'the best Pixar film of the century', but it is still hard to dislike this film. Although as a warning, watching it on an empty stomach is a bad idea.
