When Remy gets separated from his rat family, he finds himself smack-dab in Paris, at Gusteau's restaurant. But Gusteau has died, and a new chef, Skinner (Holm), has taken over the staff, which includes Colette (Garofalo) and newcomer Linguini (Romano).

Remy spices up a soup and makes it better, but Linguini gets the credit for it. Eventually Linguini and Remy unite to figure out how Remy can control Linguini's actions by hiding in his chef's hat and tugging on his hair. Colette is suspicious of this new young chef, but she is also falling in love with him.

Meanwhile, Remy's rat family find him and want him back, but they like it when Remy allows them a few morsels from the kitchen. When renowned critic Anton Ego (O'Toole) plans to visit and the rest of the staff walk out on Linguini, it's Remy and his rat family who do the cooking (after washing their paws, of course). But the health inspector is on his way, and Ego wants to meet the chef. ...

Too many rats in the kitchen

The climactic scene of rats working to create a perfect meal for the critic Ego is reminiscent of the mice scurrying around to make a dress for Cinderella. It's still sort of unappetizing to think that the meal is being prepared by big fat sewer rats. Not all of them are cute.

Brad Bird, who created the brilliant Incredibles, sort of inherited this languishing project at Pixar and somehow brought the story together with such disparate elements as a ghost chef, a smart rat, a snooty French girl and a slacker goofball. Disney, famous for turning rodents into animated heroes, teamed up with Pixar to make it work out again. It's much better than the more British rat film Flushed Away, and it has much more heart.

Of course, Remy's mom is nowhere in the story (she was apparently written out), but that's a typical Disney tactic, and thankfully there's no Bambi moment with the mom snapped in a trap or anything like that. The animation is strictly hand-drawn, a cry back to the old Disney ways, and as if to emphasize that, the credits claim in big letters that "no stop-motion techniques were used" in the making of this film.

Having recently had to trap four rats in various traps in our pantry, this wasn't a movie I was itching to see, but it turned out to be surprisingly heartfelt and sweet. OK, so the title is a bit odd, but it teaches audiences how to properly pronounce an obscure French dish.