If you can believe in good food. If you can believe in love. If you can believe in miracles. If you can believe that a rat can cook...Ratatouille.

Pretty good, huh? I should write these for a living. Seriously, though. I came out of this movie and started googling chef schools. It's that good. A great story, not just expected starchy stuffing to support a thin fillet of animation and effects. Like a good meal, each element is necessary, and offers something unexpected. And like the best of meals, it combines something humble, rats—and these aren't funny, cute rats—with something refined, good food. But perhaps what I enjoyed most was the movie's sense of...taste. I mean, I felt that the movie makers really understood cooking and had a love for it, and this suffused the film with a warm base note of believability and also fun.

Secrets of NIMH meets Julia Child. Who knew it could be so good?

Labels: movies