As their techniques improve, they maintain the same level of quality

Rating: 9/10 (25 July 2009)

Pixar's first venture into 3D is just about everything you would expect of it. Beautiful, gorgeous, colorful, and all that and a story too. A story full of lovable characters, adventure, and a gruff ol' fart. Everybody loves gruff ol' farts, especially those that have hearts.
Some stand-outish things: 1) Whoa. Dog character dialog that sounds exactly like how you'd imagine dogs think.
2) Whoa. Animated blood. Pixar truly pulls no punches.
3) Whoa. One of the saddest cartoon deaths since Mustafa went down in Lion King.
4) Whoa. What a tear-inducing ending! 5) Whoa. That scene when he looks through the adventure album again and discovers something new hit ya right in the heart.
Make no doubt about it, whether I have kids or not I'm saving all Pixar productions to be watched over and over again. Nobody I think in the history of cinema has had such regular and trustworthy output, especially for movies that are aimed at children.
There is one thing. As their animation has gotten more and more detailed, the character's faces have started looking more and more marshmallowy and plastic, devoid of quite the amount of detail put into, for instance, the millions of leaves in the background. This time you get to see Carl's face get all scrubbly and patchy as he doesn't shave for a few days, but the kid still looks like a plastic lollipop. I'm worried that, although they've gotten to an almost unthinkable level of detail in movement and environment, that Pixar isn't much interested in putting more dynamism into the faces, which still move roughly the same way they have for several years now. This type of thing wouldn't even be noticeable if it wasn't for the constantly improving level of all of the rest of their work. That said, like always, this is merely a nit to pick and not something that it ruinous or damaging to the fun and heart-filled Pixar experience. They are still, as far as I'm concerned, reigning kings of quality CG children's animation.
--PolarisDiB