“As a story, however, Ratatouille is fun without very much surprise. It’s like a fusty old Disney cartoon retrofitted with the Pixar sheen. The lack of celebrity voices is a major drawback, since Remy ends up with very little personality. Contrast him with, say, the bad-boy Owen Wilson speedster in Cars, and you’re seeing the difference between a hero with spice and a bland one who happens to know where the spice rack is.”

Well said, Owen Gleiberman. In fact, the only way we could agree with you more were if we were to be inside you, which we think about. Often. At any rate, it wasn’t until we read your review that we realized the shortcomings of this fusty movie. We left the Googleplex elated, thrilled with Pixar’s best work to date. However, when we went home to rave about our experience and began searching for Ratatouille message boards, we stumbled upon your review. Yep, we’d have to save “OMFG! Best Movie Ever!!! RWFLOL!” for License To Wed, because your astute critique was spot on—and illuminated the folly of our way.

You’re more correct than Judith Martin, Owen: if you don’t have celebrity fuel, you’re running on fumes. Celebrities make everything better: diet books, electric grills, sweatpants, perfume, kids with cancer, global warming, rehab facilities, Namibia, and, most of all, animated movies. Ever since we read your review it’s as if Ratatouille didn’t even have a plot. It’s hard to believe we could even understand the no-names voicing those fusty characters. When a celebrity rat says something like, “Now shut up and eat your garbage.” it’s hilarious. When a non-celebrity rat says the same thing, it comes out sounding more like, “Now shut up and eat your garbage.” What a joke. A fucking bad joke. Like the one about the guy named Tonto Bernstein, but whose friends call him Bubba. These Pixar people were clearly not thinking. Frankly, we found it all to reek of amateur.

If only George Clooney had voiced Remy and Jessica Alba voiced Colette, then, and only then, would we have had some real rat laughs. And how perfect would Vince Vaughn have been as the pint-sized French chef? Or the hilarious Keanu Reeves as Emile? Or Ben Affleck. Or Freddie Prinze, Jr! The list goes on for inches. Just the thought of that star-studded movie would certify it a Fresh Tomato.

And where were the Sopranos references? The Coldplay is gay pokes? Where was Randy Newman with a piano ditty about dreaming big and accepting all walks of life, even the hairless-tailed rodent variety? Where were the fart jokes? Oh, how we yearned, prayed, and pleaded for a fart joke. Just one sweet, juicy, colon-blowing, fart joke. Christ, they sit around eating cheese all day. Hello? Talk about digestion fodder. And where the hell were the product placements? Like real products. Not some invented brand that we can’t buy. We want to buy the cookware of rats. We want to sip the wine of rodents. Listen up, Pixar, you can spend all day making that copper pan look photo-realist, with all the little necessary dings and imperfections, but at the end of the day, if we can’t see that big fat Williams and Sonoma name on the handle, it just ain’t real. Same goes for all the produce. That shit comes with stickers. Where was that Mexican lady with bananas on her head? She could have had a song-and-dance number!!!

If only this were the third in the series of Ratatouille films. (Ratatouille: The Turd!) Perhaps then it would have had a chance. The threequel is always the best picture. or the fourth. It’s Movie Law. We simply cannot stop agreeing with you, bad-boy Owen Wilso- whoops! Gleiberman. No celebrity voices = a hot shit sandwich on rye at the movies. And bravo to you, again, for that scintillating turn of spice phrase. You, sir, are as nimble with the written word as a cartoon rat is with cartoon spices in a cartoon movie about a cartoon rat using spices.

$48,000,000? That’s all? This movie could have been big. Why the producers didn’t insist upon hiring the deliciously thick Beyonce Knowles as the voice of a curvy, street-smart, Parisian fem-rat, who dreams of escaping the gutter and becoming a famous singer one day with her own line of swimwear made from garbage by her mother, is beyond us. It’s all about the secondary critter characters! The slinking ally cats, the twin crows on the wire, the nutless squirrel, the French poodle. THE FUCKING FRENCH POODLE!!! WHERE WAS IT?! Bonjour?! Renee Zellweger? We know she can do the accent. Don’t those so-called “Creatives” over at Pixar know it’s the parents who are taking all these kids to see the movie, and that it’s the parents who want to hear quality, big name, celebrity voices, like those belonging to Woody Allen and Dan Aykroyd, coming out of those cartoon mouths? Creatives? More like Retardives. Cleary, we are cut from the same cloth, Owen Gleiberman.

And you, sir, were kind—leaning more towards noble—enough to bestow this cartoonish cartoon with a letter grade of B. And for that, we, sir, give you, the real celebrity voice here due praise, an A. But not that it matters what we say; we’re nowhere near a red carpet.

• See who voiced which character in Ratatouille.

[This post was heavily edited by goldenfiddle’s South Carolina correspondent, editor to the stars, and minty julep drinker, Pants Buckingham.]