Pixar perfect

What Pixar's first film "Toy Story" did to show the plight of the common child's toy, "Ratatouille" does for the rat. OK, not quite. But Pixar does continue its trend of giving the audience the viewpoint of characters not often seen in film. And, as usual, the result is practically flawless.\nRemy (voiced by Patton Oswalt) is a rat with a heightened sense of taste and smell. Having seen the late French chef Gusteau on TV, he decides he wants to be a chef, but his father relegates him to being the clan's poison checker. After a run-in with a shotgun-weilding nearsighted old lady, Remy is separated from his family and rides on Gusteau's book "Anyone Can Cook" through the sewer pipes to Paris. There he stumbles on Gusteau's failing restaurant and becomes the acclaimed ghost chef for fumbling garbage boy Linguini.\nAdd in a handful of colorful humans -- a suspicious head chef, a quiet cook rumored to have killed a man using only his thumb, a badass motorcycle-riding woman and a bitter critic who was responsible for Gusteau's downfall in the first place -- and you have a successful recipe for laughs. \nThankfully, director Brad Bird decided everything had to be shot from Remy's perspective, a tactic that not only fosters cohesiveness but also simplicity of action and character-building. In the extras, Bird says some scenes had to be cut or modified because they did not maintain Remy's viewpoint. This and all other extras are completely enjoyable, including a delightful Pixar short titled "Lifted" and a hilarious mock-doc named "Your Friend the Rat." \nThe most intriguing part of the extras, however, are the deleted scenes, which are flat, black-and-white hand drawings that hardly resemble how the film looks in completion. It's amazing to think the artists start out with such simplistic 2D renderings and end up with a world more beautiful than reality.\nIt is this beauty, a calculated imperfection on the part of the artists and filmmakers, that creates such a mixed feeling of familiarity and fantasy for the audience. Certainly, the story line is cute and somewhat new, but the film's strength is in the execution. It's been more than a decade since "Toy Story," and Pixar is still managing to capture our attention and, what's more, keep it.