Rats to riches

Pixar puts together a good summer recipe for Ratatouille | Priya Abraham

Remy is a rat with a nose for food—especially the gourmet kind served in five-star Paris restaurants. Not for him is the garbage his rodent brethren scarf down: Instead, he dreams of becoming a top-notch chef at the center of the culinary universe.

So goes the basic plotline of Ratatouille (rated G), the latest animated feature from Pixar. The film's writer-director is Brad Bird, the creator of the Oscar-winning The Incredibles, which Ratatouille matches for originality and sheer delightfulness.

With his second Pixar work, Bird shows a knack for creating animation with gentle, intuitive stories that often feel like real-life films.

With his special nose, Remy (Patton Oswalt) has a dull job checking his clan's food for rat poison, but he soon learns the art of combining fresh ingredients through a cookbook by France's once-best chef, Gusteau. The deceased Gusteau appears to Remy in an apparition, guiding the rat to his now-declining Paris restaurant.