Yes, either this rat is absolutely enormous or those vegetables are miniature, or both, and also there are several other glaring flaws in this drawing. So sue me. We went to see Ratatouille last night, and as everyone before me has already said, it was charming, delightful, funny, beautiful, and moving. In addition, the food was shockingly appealing. The New York Times had an article a week or two ago about the loving attention the animation team gave to the problem of making the food look not too real and not too cartoonish, and above all not nauseating -- the trouble, of course, is that humans are very good at noticing when food looks off, and the more photorealistic the rendering gets, the more problematic even a small off-ness becomes. It is doubtless all too easy to tumble into the Uncanny Valley of foodstuffs, or to unintentionally recapitulate the Jan Švankmajer style of nauseating surrealism (no other director I know of makes eating such a mundanely revolting activity). But Ratatouille avoids this fate, sufficiently so that you will probably come away from it wanting to cook something, or eat something, delicious as soon as possible.

If you want to, you could even cook the incredibly finicky gussied-up ratatouille (aka confit byaldi) that sparks a climactic Proustian moment late in the movie, because the Times kindly published the recipe for your enjoyment. I must confess that I find the final instruction, "Slice in quarters and very carefully lift onto plate with offset spatula. Turn spatula 90 degrees, guiding byaldi into fan shape," to be rather comical. More like "Turn spatula 90 degrees, guiding byaldi into a sloppy mess," I suspect, but I suppose that's why we leave some methods to our ratty betters.