French Foodies Eating Up 'Ratatouille'

Legions of French citizens are crowding theaters for a first taste of Pixar's latest 3-D animated feature Ratatouille, the story of a rodent chef in Paris and now the 4th highest-grossing movie premiere in France's history. The French, known for their devotion to everything food-related, are raving about "Ratatouille" for its fastidious faithfulness to gourmet food and the art of cooking.

A Le Monde critic even deemed the film "one of the greatest gastronomic films in the history of cinema." Filmmakers traveled to famed French restaurants and studied the actions, environments, and creations of real-life chefs to forge Ratatouille's authenticity, the Washington Post reports. "I didn't expect such gastronomical knowledge from an American cartoon!" said a fan. (More France stories.)