Around the time Mr. Fredricksen's old Victorian house was being dragged along the side of a Hindenburg-era dirigible, I realized that Pixar had turned the controls over to a bunch of card-carrying surrealists. Rack up another screaming hit for the team from Emeryville with UP, a hilarious and wise marriage of graphic sheen to feeling.

All the trade show stunners we've come to expect from Pixar are there--smoke is smokier, water wetter, weight is weightier (no small challenge for digital animation) and gawd those gorgeous balloons. But this time the golden-age studio puts all in service to the most personal and idiosyncratic of visions.

Ed Asner voices Carl Fredricksen, the recently bereaved and curmudgeonly holdout on a city block experiencing urban teardown and build-up. When a tussle with neighboring developers seems to doom his prospects for staying there, he hatches a scheme to realize a childhood dream he shared with his wife--and takes an unwary Explorer Scout along for the ride.

Up's big heart is anchored to the pain of loss: When Carl is finally aloft, it's not clear he wants to come down again. The plain-wrap message--to recognize the adventures you've always had in the everyday--brought a tear to my curmudgeonly eye.