Ratatouille is equally confident when it scurries outside. There is a tangy sense of authenticity to the kitchen scenes, where the medallions of monkfish are lovingly prepared by a band of ex-cons and cardsharps before being bussed through to a palatial dining room that thrums to an undertone of clinking glasses and murmured conversation. The over-bright, fauvist colours that typified those early CGI outings have now been tempered by a richer, more subtle palette. Judged solely in terms of animation technique, Bird's film is a masterpiece. Naturally the diners love Remy's cuisine while lavishing Linguini with all the credit. Installed beneath a chef's hat, the rat communicates his gifts by pulling at Linguini's hair a complex series of tugs, yanks and passes that has the kid jerking like a marionette from the oregano to the saffron and over to the pan. Alighting at a top Paris restaurant, he promptly becomes the puppet-master of Linguini (Lou Romano), a lowly kitchen boy. He totters on his hind legs to keep his front paws clean and generally conceals the soul of a poet inside the body of an incontinent, disease-riddled rodent. This is because Remy (voiced by US comedian Patton Oswalt) is a culinary genius. The film's hero is Remy, who would probably not be caught dead eating discarded popcorn in any case.

In one early scene, an entire horde of them is forcibly flushed out of their nest and the sight is so viscerally shocking that it takes a second to check yourself and realise that, hang on, we're not against these rats, we're on their side. While Brad Bird's film is being distributed by Disney as part of an ongoing deal with Pixar, it's safe to assume that these vermin would never have passed muster during the wholesome heyday of Uncle Walt.

They have snaking tails and skittering claws and rapid heartbeats that make their flanks quiver and their fur tremble.

Among its many, myriad delights, Ratatouille is a film to make you love the rat.Īnd there is no escaping it: Ratatouille's rats are unmistakably ratty. and yet after sitting through the latest offering from Pixar (and at a large London cinema to boot), I feel oddly sanguine at the prospect. Of course this is alarming and of course this is horrible. Apparently they would steal in during the show, prowl the aisles under cover of darkness and vacuum spilt popcorn from around the feet of the punters. T here was a rumour doing the rounds a few years back that rats had been observed at some of the larger London cinemas.

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