Dealing with wet rat fur must be a real pain.

Not just is it a hard texture to even imagine, but making it authentically muddy and rain-soaked, wow.

So here's to the animators, that ever-incredible Pixar crew who once again pours handdrawn characters through their Willy Wonka-esque computers and creates magic. As with each film, here too -- with rat fur, cheeses real enough to smell, wine, skin and reflective petrol tanks on motorcycles with a shine you can almost touch -- they redefine animation itself.

Ratatouille is a tremendous technical achievement -- it just seems to lack that mad, brilliant quirk we've come to expect from Pixar -- and director Brad Bird, whose last offerings were The Iron Giant and The Incredibles. Animation doesn't get any better.

Going by track record, Pixar can't possibly make a bad film, but this -- for all its talk of flavour and originality -- is the most vanilla and formulaic of their productions, one with basic characters and a simple story. In short, it's a kids' film, and the rest of us are supposed to be spellbound by the dazzling rendering -- nothing wrong with that, it makes for a perfectly pleasant main course, but that magic ingredient, the irresistibly fab imagination, is sadly missing.

Ratatouille is, in keeping with cartoons of the day, the tale of a misfit. Worse off than a tone-deaf penguin, however, is Remy the rat (a likeable Patton Oswalt), a scavenger handicapped with a highly developed sense of taste and smell -- and the only use his father can find for his abilites is poison-detector.

As he sits high above, sniffing mushrooms picked out of the garbage for traces of vermin-killer, Remy dreams of food, real food, with flavour -- a feast for the senses, he gushes, nearly echoing Cosmo Kramer's description of Macanaw peaches as 'a circus in your mouth.' The lights around flash brightly, evocatively as he nibbles mixed flavours and dreams of cooking.

As the great chef himself says, 'Anyone can cook.' The mantra made millions for celebrated chef Gusteau, (the reliably superb Brad Garrett) now deceased. Gusteau continues to live on in spirit, an affable figment of Remy's cookery-book driven imagination, giving the rat advice and much encouragement -- imagine the rotund offspring of Anthony Bourdain and Jiminy Cricket.

Gusteau's famed Paris restaurant, marred by bad reviews, isn't what it used to be. Still, of course, there is no room for a rat in the kitchen. Skinner (Ian Holm), more likely named after the behavioral psychologist rather than the Simpsons' principal, is the dimunitive overlord here, annoyed by a pesky new garbage boy who seems to know more than he lets on. Actually, the boy doesn't: Linguini (Lou Romano) is a redheaded klutz who can't cook, and director Bird tosses him cruelly into three predictable subplots -- a hackneyed inheritance story, a rushed romantic arc (when in Paris, one guesses inevitably), and a typically 1980s' The Associate-like routine of a clueless-sap (or imaginary) alter ego elevated to great heights by a largely unseen genius pulling the strings.

And in Ratatouille, Remy tugs on some pretty painful strings. Ha.

The characters go through the motions in all earnestness, and while this is a staggeringly detailed rendition -- everything from layers of muslin to slices of cucumber seem spectacularly real and drawn with astonishing minuteness, with bits of movie magic hidden casually around the kitchen -- the whole film is played a bit too straight. And the characters, while likeable in a warm-fuzzy way, aren't fantastic. The lead players are as basic as they come -- Janeane Garofalo's Colette looks like a grown-up Violet Parr, though -- and the supporting cast, usually the keystone of Pixar greatness (see Cars, as shining example) just doesn't cut it. There's no character that's quotably t-shirt worthy, and that's a shame.

With one supremely notable exception.

Anton Ego, uber-snobbish restaurant critic, is one for the ages. Sardonic right down to his bony ankles, he sits in a nightmarish study shaped like a coffin and hammers out ruthless reviews on a typewriter that looks unmistakably skull-y. And he's voiced gloriously by Peter O'Toole, with delectable condescension permeating his every, sarcastic word.

His words reach magnificent peak in the articulate beginnings of his all-important review, as he talks about the irrelevance of critics. It starts off completely self-deprecatory ('The work of a critic is easy') yet goes on to soberingly explain that the critic has a valiant need, when he does risk his neck striving for 'the discovery and defense of the new.'

Bravo, Mr Bird, well said. It's what critics who raved over The Iron Giant did for you. But you aren't new anymore, and we now expect more, greedily, than just spellbinding animation. We expect the incredible.

And so it is, as Ego asks for a bottle of '47 Chateau Cheval Blanc (and is served, we notice by peeking at the label, the significantly inferior Chateau Lafite-Rothschild) to go with his serving of 'perspective,' we can't help but shudder as a mere peasant dish is brought to him, the simple rat-a-too-ee of the title.

And that's possibly how we need to taste this film, as a movie about food that doesn't aim for glorious in-jokes (though it tosses a few on the side, with a remarkable amount of euphemism for a kiddie movie) or truly memorable moments, but instead on what a food-film should. It's not a delightful feast of venison or foie gras, but a perfectly cooked peasant dish, which makes you hungry. It is testimony to Pixar that every frame of the film makes us long for cheeses and more, a full gourmet meal, and we can't wait to get out of the theatre and stuff our faces.

Thus, it might not be a great film, but as restaurants go, it rocks. Which is why I'm going to give it exactly as many stars as Michelin would.

Rediff Rating: