Instead, Brad Bird reminds us that most of us fell in love with some form of art at a young age. Maybe we weren’t watching Persona when we fell in love with film, but that is okay. There was something in that initial form of art that captured our imagination, our minds, and our hearts. And, that was enough. This core passion, Bird suggests, is not just what should hook us to an art form, but it should be what continues to drive us to seek out new creativity within that form. Critics, Bird suggests, are not soulless leeches, but rather passionate individuals who are so dedicated to some form that they devote their lives to studying it. They may grow hardened from the sheer breadth of their exposure, but that core nugget of passion is what drives them to dedicate their entire being to a form. Ideally, they push the form forward by raising new voices on the platform they possess. They help generate innovation by highlighting passion and invention. Ego, though he initially embodies all that we bemoan about criticism – harshness, haughtiness, and a general sense of disdain, reminds us why criticism should be such a valued art form. It is a privileged job, but one that comes with a great many responsibilities. It requires an understanding of the form, how it works, what makes it tick, why it sometimes works, and sometimes doesn't. But, ultimately, what makes criticism valuable is the passion of the critic. She or he has decided to dedicate their life to a form. The idea that art can change someone’s life so irrevocably that they are willing to spend the remainder of it on that form is a powerful one. It’s an idea that gets lost in the harshness of some pieces and the constant desire for art to be better than it currently is. It is the drive for innovation and fear of stagnation that pushes the critic to in turn push the artist who, cyclically (and ideally), will, in turn, push the critic.

Ratatouille reminds us that passion supersedes everything. Passion drives innovation and innovation drives passion. Neither limb of the broader corpus of art can exist without the other. Or as Anton Ego puts it, “But the bitter truth we critics must face, is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends.”