Ratatouille

Steve Jobs had two big successes last week: the iPhone from his Apple company, and Ratatouille from Pixar, his movie company, that is now part of Disney Studios.

It's an absolutely wonderful movie, with comedy, chase scenes, a love story, good guys, bad guys, haute cuisine and gross-outs, that will appeal to just about everyone.

The tiny hero is Remy, a food-loving rat who risks his life and forsakes his family, to eat well and cook well. He walks upright, like ancestor Mickey Mouse, but for a different reason: to avoid soiling his "hands" that will touch food.

After he and the rest of his rat pack are driven from their rural home by a shotgun-wielding crone, he is swept through sewers and ultimately ends up in a restaurant in Paris, where he helps an akward young floor mopper to become a star cook, with the aid of the ghost of the great chef who previously ran the restaurant.

Even if you don't care about food or rodents, the technology is enough to keep your eyes glued to the screen. The details and vivid imagery of the computer animation are breathtaking. Mouse fur and whiskers are cartoony-real, but other scenery elements are photo-realistic, as real as anything that came from a camera.

There were two problems, however: all the rats and humans speak English, not French; and while the rats can speak to eachother, they can't speak to the humans.