"Anyone Can Cook"

I'm not going to write a movie review of Ratatouille. Everyone by now has heard of it. A Pixar creation, and Disney's best release perhaps in decades. You've read the reviews. The first movie I've seen for years, maybe ever, that has received 100 percent favorable reviews from the critics, or at least from the large number that are published on the Rotten Tomatoes website.

But you "foodies" living in Sonoma County -- you guys have to see it. The whole world of food preparation and appreciation is spread before us, like a tasty French pique-nique. The experimenting with combinations of contrasting flavors. The technical skills required of the cooks. The jealousies within the kitchen staff. The tension between chef and waiter. The seeming chaos within the kitchen, contrasted with the quiet perfection of the dining room, on opposite sides of a swinging door.

And -- Doug and Juliana take note -- the tyranny of the Restaurant Critic. The aptly-naned Anton Ego, a formidable food snob (with the voice of Peter O'Toole), who can destroy a chef's career with one well-chosen, sneering word in his newspaper column -- but who proves in the end that he has a heart, as well as a stomach. And finally, the danger that heirs to the name of a famous restaurant and chef will exploit the name to market -- in this case -- junk food.

And underlying all is the film's assertion that even the most despised of outcast groups can bring forth artistic genius -- the sewers and garbage dumps of Paris can send forth a rat with the sensitivity of an aesthete and the soul of a poet. The hero, Remy, indisputably a rodent in a kitchen, rises to become the greatest chef in Paris, with the help of his goofy human friend, Linguini. And he does so, ultimately, without turning his back on a horrifyingly huge pack of his scurrying relatives -- a family of ever-starving scavengers for whom, as his Dad explains, "food is just fuel."

The film works on many levels. And now, before these random thoughts of mine evolve, in fact, into a review, let me just leave you with one thought:     See it!