Almost perfect if not for:

Rating: 9/10 (7 June 2009)

The dogs! They kept this thing from being perfect. It was magical and original until those dogs showed up. Then we got the bad humor found in all the awful Madagascar/Ice Age stuff (at least they didn't break out some C&C music factory rubbish). Plus it was asking too much to suspend our belief that this man figured out how to make a dog translator (and taught dogs how to cook dinner and fly planes)-- yet didn't seem to invent anything else on that level. MAYBE if we found him to be some sort of Captain Nemo-esc genius with all these other gadgets and such in his lair... but everything else he had was antiquated. On top of that, why was he still alive and physically superior to our 78-year-old protagonist who was obviously much younger than he? It's like they had it all done and some exec screened it; saying "can you add some humor and action in there for the lowest common denominator video game mentality crowd?".
Other than that, it was beautiful. The first 20 minutes or so of it was so amazingly wonderful I found myself tearing up. I teared up at the end as well. But most of the middle "action" part was tired.
Nevertheless, Pixar is the golden goose every year. I'd follow them off a cliff.