I missed “Ratatouille” in the theater because of a deadline on a long-forgotten story, but I was lucky enough to get an Xmas DVD from a friend who loved it so much he saw it twice and wanted to play it forward. And of course it was as down-to-the-tiniest-detail brilliant as almost everyone had said, but what most struck me was what a honking allegory it was for immigration. Shades of the Big Homme wanting to hide his Mexicans from mainstream view! Americans — and Parisians — would always prefer not to know who exactly is flipping their omelets, and isn’t it depressing how the party of evil has been able to present hard workers as rats? The major dis of sell-out chefs was also worth the two hours in front of the teevee. (Was Skinner supposed to be Puck?) And I really liked that all the magazine covers on the walls in Gusteau’s office were American. Bon appetit, indeed.