If you stay through the closing credits of this film, you’ll see a little box in which is written: "Our Quality Assurance Guarantee: 100% Genuine Animation! No motion capture or any other performance shortcuts were used in the production of this film. 100% Computer Animation, No Motion Capture involved."

Ratatouille looks it, and I mean that in the very best way. There are no freak-out scenes in which a character looks almost real -- they always look like animated creations. It’s more advanced than any animated film made thus far, standing as the Peter Pan or Lady and the Tramp of today: an animated feature against which all others must be measured.

Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt), a young rat, has an unusual sense of taste. While his family and friends are content to eat garbage, Remy dreams of gourmet dishes delicately flavored with herbs. His hero is the great chef Gusteau (Brad Garrett), whose book, Anyone Can Cook, is Remy’s bible. After a big upset, the rats of Remy’s clan must leave their home in the walls and floors of a cottage in rural France and escape to the sewers of Paris. Remy, floating along on a copy of Gusteau’s book, is separated from the others and ends up -- where else? -- at Gusteau’s restaurant.

But Gusteau has recently died, and the restaurant’s reputation has fallen: Anton Ego, the leading food critic (villainously voiced by Peter O’Toole), has demoted it by two stars. One night Remy can stand it no longer and gets into the kitchen, where, with a deft use of spices, he rescues a soup that has just been ruined by the garbage boy, Linguini (Lou Romano). The soup turns out to be a big hit with the patrons, but at first no one knows that Remy is responsible for it -- and after all, he’s only a rat. The new, commercially minded head chef, Skinner (Ian Holm), orders Linguini to kill Remy, but Linguini can’t do it. Besides, Linguini has discovered that Remy is the "little chef" who concocted the hit soup, and he and the rat become odd-couple friends. First in the squalor of Linguini’s garret apartment and then in the restaurant itself, Remy hides under the toque of Linguini -- whom Skinner now expects to duplicate his success with the soup -- and pulls the boy’s red hair this way and that to manipulate his hands in the motions of selecting, chopping, stirring, whipping -- in short, cooking. So good are the results that the restaurant regains its popularity and once again must face a review from Anton Ego.

I’ve skipped many of the subplots because it would spoil too many surprises. Let’s just say that Ratatouille deals with friendship, achieving excellence, strength in numbers, and many other good topics. Don’t take that to mean that it is a "serious" movie -- I laughed more than I have at any film in years. There are many visual and dialogue jokes, and the pacing is rapid without becoming frenetic, as in Flushed Away. But the humor is more than mere jokes. The characters are so likable that my heart cheered for them, and the lessons they imparted were painlessly deposited there. I came out of the theater smiling, better for having seen this movie.

The superb CGI animation is the best I have ever seen. Pixar has set a new standard, something the company seems to do all the time, and writer-director Brad Bird has emerged as the leading director of animated films. At many points I couldn’t help but think that if Walt Disney himself could have gotten his hands on CGI gear, he would have made this film just the way Bird has. Can one give Bird any higher compliment?

Ratatouille is not going to market the way other animated films have. It’s hard to imagine a rat on a lunch box. Instead, its wonders will be spread by word of mouth. I’ve started that here -- now it’s your turn to carry the torch. There’s no doubt in my mind that this film is a classic. See it, then tell everyone you know, so that they, too, can come out of the theater smiling.

First Live Free or Die Hard, now Ratatouille, and, looking good on paper but not yet released, Hairspray, The Simpsons, and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix -- this could be one of the best summers in movie memory. Ratatouille has already made an important contribution to that goal. Going to the movies could become fun again.

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