Nearly two decades later, Brad Bird’s love letter to Paris, art, and stubborn integrity remains arguably the most sophisticated film Pixar has ever produced. It’s not just a kids' movie about a rodent with good hygiene; it’s a 111-minute philosophical argument about the nature of criticism, the agony of creativity, and the difference between tasting and eating . Remy is a rat with a superhuman sense of smell and a dangerous obsession: haute cuisine. Inspired by the late chef Auguste Gusteau ("Anyone can cook"), Remy finds himself separated from his colony and literally thrown into the sewers of Paris. He ends up above a failing restaurant once owned by his hero, where he meets Linguini—a garbage boy with the cooking skills of a garden gnome.

If you haven’t seen it since you were a kid, rewatch it. You’ll realize that you spent your childhood laughing at the rat running across the ceiling, only to grow up and cry at the critic finding his soul.

It is an incredibly subversive message for 2007 (and frankly, for today). Ratatouille argues that talent is not the property of the elite. It is a fluke of nature that can appear in the most unlikely, unwanted places. Even if you mute the sound, the film is a feast. The way light bounces off a demi-glace. The sound of a perfectly seared steak. The steam rising from a bowl of soup in a cold attic. Pixar’s animators spent months studying the physics of simmering liquids and the texture of cracked pepper.