The best yet!

Rating: 10/10 (30 June 2007)

At this point, Brad Bird is no longer making great animated movies -- he's making great movies, end of sentence.
From the standpoint of writing, this one keeps an astonishing number of themes going, creates great multifaceted characters, and maintains believable suspense and motivation, all without ever seeming strained or "written." From the standpoint of animation, it's unbelievable. The translucency of a rat's paw, the dented shine of a copper kettle, the complex texture of a crumb of bread, are all rendered with breathtaking accuracy. (And Paris has never looked lovelier -- if the French tourist board didn't subsidize this production, they should have.) From the standpoint of voice acting, it ranges from believable and unshowoffy (unlike the annoying star turns we're seeing in a lot of these days) to the stentorian sneer of the great Peter O'Toole.
And, most of all, the character creation and animation is beyond belief. The facial expressions, the unique-to-each-character body movements, the sense of weight and texture are so incredibly closely observed and reproduced that at times I had to work to remember that what I was seeing was animation and not Oscar-caliber acting.
If this one doesn't go up in the Best Picture category instead of simply Best Animated Feature, there's no justice in Oscar-land.