ratlogo.jpgDisney/Pixar’s Ratatouille opens today in 3,940 theaters according to Box Office Mojo. The film is wowing the critics, garnering an impressive 94% on the Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer, and a perfect 100% with the Cream of the Crop critics. The film is being gushed over for its look (Chicago Tribune: “you have never seen a computer-animated feature with this sort of visual panache and detail”; Minneapolis Star Tribune: “I defy you to name another animated film so overflowing with superfluous beauty”), its story (Beaumont Review: “If rival studios ever adopted Pixar’s story process for their films, there would be no need for critics”; Associated Press: “Ratatouille is free of the kind of gratuitous pop-culture references that plague so many movies of the genre; it tells a story, it’s very much of our world but it never goes for the cheap, easy gag”), and especially its director (Slate: “Brad Bird’s best movie yet, and from the writer-director who made two of the best American animated features of the past decade… that’s something”; New York Magazine: “this puts him somewhere between Chuck Jones and Michelangelo”). The film hasn’t won over every single critic though (Arizona Daily Star: “The wild, devoted praise afforded Bird’s solid yet tepid films puzzles me. It’s as though society is playing a joke that everyone but me and a few others are in on”; Time Out NY: “Ratatouille is a film made for snobs that may still repel them”). Box Office Prophets sees a first place $56 million opening for the film. Box Office Report concurs with the exact same prediction.