“Not everyone can become a great artist, but a great artist can come from anywhere.”

Pixar has done it again. My sister bought us Ratatouille, a movie about a rat who becomes a chef. Like the other Pixar movies, it shakes your imagination, delights your eyes, and tugs on the strings of your heart.

I’ve seen it 3 times in the last 24 hours.

I wonder: when a new artistic medium (like animation) comes along, how often do the creators of that new medium really take advantage of all the new possibilities that resulted from their invention? Probably not often. If I had invented cool animation technology, I’d be tempted to skip the fancy actors and writers and just go straight for the cool action sequences.

But Pixar doesn’t do that. The magic of their movies has little to do with the quality of their graphics, although they do employ leading edge technologies.

Pixar makes incredible movies because they write high-quality scripts that touch a massive range of people.

In Cars, a flashy young racecar learns to honor his elders. In The Incredibles, a family works together to save the world and understand what makes a hero.

In Ratatouille, a self-absorbed French food critic rediscovers the joy of cooking from an unexpected source. The story weaves in lessons about trust, innovation, creativity, and love.

Will I drop out of the working world to take cooking classes? Not quite. But I did notice an extra ounce of care in my hands as I prepared my grilled cheese for lunch today…