I Smell A (Quite Lovely) Rat.

This summer has already included the shockingly good Spider-Man 3 and also the surprisingly hilarious Ocean's Thirteen, and while those pictures pretty much met my expectations, I had really high hopes for Ratatouille. I expected a certain awesomeness, what with it being a Pixar picture and being written/directed by the ever-brilliant Brad Bird (he wrote and directed The Incredibles, which is not just one of my favorite animated films, but one of my favorite films ever).

Every Sunday night in our house is Family Movie Night, where we cook up a pizza and sit down to watch something together. Lately, we've been working our way through the fantastic series Planet Earth, but we decided this weekend to take the fam out for Ratatouille. I cannot begin to articulate how delightful the movie turned out. It's moving, it's thoughtful, it's elegant, it's funny, it's inventive, and it contains absolutely zero jokes about flatulence, bodily fluids, or someone getting kicked in the crotch.

Thirty minutes into it, my five-year-old son leaned over to his fifteen-year-old sister and asked her, "Ask Daddy if we can buy this movie on DVD." When it was over, my eight-year-old daughter said (I quote roughly), "I. Loved. That movie." In fact, she later told me that, when we got the DVD, she didn't want to watch it too much because (again, rough quote), "If you watch really special things like that too often, they become, you know, common."

Nevertheless, we'll see it again. I hope you see it for the first time soon.

Up next? Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Rescue Dawn, The Simpsons Movie, and the other summer movie I've been salivating over, The Bourne Ultimatum, which has a newly released trailer.

So, what do you guys think? Favorite summer movie thus far? Biggest surprise? Biggest disappointment? Most anticipated? Sound off in the comments section.

Yay, summer!