Ratatouille

Ratatouille began as a Jan Pinkava story before Brad Bird took over as director and rewrote it into the version that hit theaters on June 29, 2007. The premise sounds like a dare: Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt), a rat with a refined sense of taste and smell, dreams of cooking at Gusteau's in Paris and gets his shot by hiding under a hat and steering kitchen boy Linguini like a marionette. The climax hinges on food, not villainy — Remy serves confit byaldi, a fancy layered spin on ratatouille suggested by real-life chef Thomas Keller, and the imperious critic Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole) takes one bite and is instantly a small boy in his mother's kitchen again.

It grossed $623.7 million worldwide and won Best Animated Feature at the 80th Academy Awards, with Michael Giacchino's Paris-café score and Camille's "Le Festin" doing heavy atmospheric lifting. Critics rated it among Pixar's very best. For 2000s kids it did something sneakier: Ego's flashback made a generation understand, in five wordless seconds, exactly what nostalgia is — a taste that teleports you home. Fitting, for the era's definitive movie about how anyone can cook.