Rated G

It looks like Disney’s fabulously successful animation studio, Pixar, may be growing up. Having previously delivered a respectable balance of adult level storytelling with the primarily childish interests of toys, monsters, fish and cars, there’s a notable step toward true maturity in their choice to base a movie around appreciation of (can it be true?) haute cuisine. Right from the title, Disney demands a certain degree of sophistication from the audience—one imagines millions of parents scrabbling to pronounce and define the provincial French dish for the kids—a bold move in a film industry that has so infamously devolved into a sad mix of poorly executed pop-culture parodies and liberal use of fart-jokes.

Setting their latest tale in an upscale Parisian restaurant populated with capable, unique and talented characters would be Disney’s next most questionable gambit. But it really pays off. Following in the mold of some of independent cinema’s best models (“Like Water for Chocolate,” “Big Night” and “Dinner Rush” all come to mind), the film paints a more eloquent portrait of an artist’s journey than has been seen on the screen for some time. That the artist happens to be a dirty farmhouse rat is next to irrelevant. Although the characters are rendered in cartoonish caricature, they move through some of the most gorgeous, rich and photorealistic backdrops Pixar has yet achieved, which is really saying something. There’s a sublime sense of geography involved. The textures and atmosphere of Paris’s streets are immaculately rendered, its glowing skyline simply breathtaking, generating a foundation of palpable, real-world emotion. One would not immediately think to sympathize with a rat in a kitchen, but Pixar makes it work.

As our rodent hero Remy (voiced to perfection by the mostly invisible TV bit player Patton Oswalt) struggles to find his path to fulfilling artistic expression through cooking, the audience is challenged to redefine its ability to sense and perceive. In a terrific reflection of Disney’s early sight and sound experiments (as seen in the first “Fantasia,”) Remy’s adoration of scent and flavor are depicted for us in a surreal display of swirling color and noise. As he bites into a particularly succulent strawberry, the fruit is illustrated in the background by a large orb and a series of squiggly lines dangerously reminiscent of an egg being swarmed by a team of sperm.

One of the film’s other greatest subtleties may be the inclusion of the restaurant’s deceased founder, Gusteau (Big Brad Garrett from ‘Everyone Loves Raymond, completely unrecognizable under a thick French accent), as Remy’s own personal Jiminy Cricket. Presented as a figment of Remy’s overactive imagination, he appears throughout the story like a fairy god-chef, hovering over the rat’s shoulder and acting as mentor, advisor and conscience. But beyond reminding us of Jiminys gee-whiz positivism, the way the character interacts with Remy could stand as a remarkable allegory for writer/producer/director Brad Birds own experience working in old Uncle Walt’s company after the loss of the big man himself. At one point, Linguini, the human hero, also trying to find his rightful place in this world, is counseled that the restaurant founder became famous for his drive to improvise and his willingness to take risks. As his successor, however, Linguini is cajoled to strictly adhere to his predecessor’s recipes—an telling commentary, considering Bird himself has built a reputation for flouting the cookie-cutter formulas that have become a tedious drag in most Disney fare for the last decade.

There’s another fascinating hat tip, as well, in the character of the frightening and loathsome food critic Anton Ego. Voiced with Oscar-worthy malevolence by the illustrious Peter O’Toole, the character is lifted wholesale from the imagination of Tim Burton, a former Disney animator who was infamously screwed out of the rights to his equally convention-breaking “Nightmare Before Christmas.” If being drawn as a whip-thin, gray-skinned vampire was not invocation enough, Ego’s typewriter actually has a skull cleverly embedded in its design and an overhead shot of his office reveals a positively coffin-shaped architecture. Whenever the critic appears onscreen, the film’s score—often an overblown Hollywood-style orchestration—withdraws into a threateningly minor-tone quote of the music of longtime Burton collaborator Danny Elfman. It works as a seamless nod to an enduring and cherished Disney property, the creation of which they themselves neglected to embrace. Late in the film, one can’t help but think of Burton during Ego’s monologue contrasting the security of a critic’s role against the courage of true artistry. Anton Ego is a compelling and brilliantly executed homage, underscoring the film’s value for pursuing one’s own creative passions in the face of seemingly insurmountable authoritarian opposition.

For a work that would present as a simple cartoon, the layers don’t stop there. Linguini’s occasional—and hilarious—lapses into slapstick are remarkably evocative of moves we would expect from a young Jerry Lewis, whose comic work has received far greater celebration in France than in the United States. Also, it can be no coincidence that in a narrative populated almost entirely by tasteful French artistes, it’s the over-consumptive, bloated, garbage-eating rats that have American accents. During a brief party scene, the rats are even seen playing and dancing to jazz music, the only patently American musical invention. The movie comes off not just as a valentine to France and French sensibility, but as a clear indictment of the U.S.A.’s blithe acceptance of the fast-food path of ignorance, obesity and disease.

All of Pixar’s expected hallmarks are present in “Ratatouille”—lush, complex visuals, mirthfully choreographed action sequences, impeccably cast voice talent and sophisticated story-telling engineered for crossover appeal to young and old alike. While brushing closely against previously explored themes of self-realization and responsibility to self, friends and family, “Ratatouille” bravely takes us somewhere Disney hasn’t carried us before—into a world of evolved sensuality, refinement and freedom of expression. It’s well worth going back for seconds.