Ratattouille 2007

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0382932/

There was a reason I skipped this when it came out.  There was a period during which Disney/ Pixar produced a certain kind of formulaic claptrap that anyone with half a brain cell could have caught onto.  For a good little while there, all of their movies were essentially "someone who isn't like most of the people around them has to try to make everyone understand them" and all of the problems stem from simple misunderstandings.  And there's always at least one person whose lack of ideological optimism is vilified.  I know these are supposed to be family movies, accessible to children, but the nuanced subject matter of the cooking world really wouldn't be on par with the understanding of children.  Hell, just some of the dialogue would have been far too complicated for children to catch; I found myself scowling and listening VERY intently to the ranting of Colleen as she explains the difficulties of getting into haute cuisine as a woman.  During which, by the by, she is stabbing knives into his shirt sleeve.  This would have made a better adult film, particularly if the metaphors could have been a little deeper, and the messages less on the sleeve.  It wasn't bad, though.

Would I recommend this?  Only for older children, but not for younger.  There's too much waving of knives, which might be a bad thing to show impressionable little ones.  For adults, there are better films, animated and otherwise.