'Up'

As success follows success for animation powerhouse Pixar, the pressure to maintain the streak must be phenomenal. Will the next film be the one that stumbles, the one that breaks stride? No one need worry, however, about "Up," Pixar's 10th and latest effort. It's not only good, it's one of Pixar's best. Some films are an obligation to write about, "Up" is the purest pleasure.

Though films such as "Toy Story," "A Bug's Life," "Toy Story 2," "Monsters, Inc." and "Wall-E" are tough to compete with, director and co-screenwriter Pete Docter, a Pixar veteran who had a credit on all those films, was able to push "Up" into the pantheon. He did it by letting his imagination fly away. Working with co-director and co-writer Bob Peterson, Docter came up the idea of cranky 78-year-old Carl Fredricksen (voiced by Ed Asner) floating off to parts unknown when his house gets hoisted into the air by exactly 20,622 helium balloons. Try pitching that idea to your agent.

But what makes "Up" stand out is not just that core concept, but what the Pixar team has been able to do with it. Rarely has any film, let alone an animated one powered by the logic of dream and fantasy, been able to move so successfully -- and so effortlessly -- through so many different kinds of cinematic territory.

Because "Up" is a Pixar film, it's a given that it's going to be clever and playful. But "Up" also has the high excitement of an adventure story and enough genuine menace to make it only the second Pixar product (after "The Incredibles") to be rated PG instead of G.

There's also the wordless visual magic of that floating balloon-powered house as well as a truly wacky sense of humor involving a pack of dogs equipped with high-tech collars that turn their classically canine thoughts into words.

As if all this wasn't enough, "Up" also generates genuine emotion and it does so by dealing unapologetically with one of Hollywood's last and most persistent taboos, old people. Instead of a Clint Eastwood-type senior citizen who is fitter than people half his age, "Up" gives us a man who uses a walker and can't handle stairs but still manages to be heroic when it counts.

And "Up's" multi-minute montage of the long married life of Carl and his wife, Ellie, is a small gem that will stay with you for a lifetime.