Sometimes a film is just so flawless that it’s nothing short of a masterpiece. For their seminal tenth film, Pixar has hit one out of the park with Up, a poignant and adventurous film for the young and the young at heart. From Monsters Inc filmmaker Pete Docter, Up is about an old man, a boy scout, a rare bird and a talking dog on the wildest of possible adventures. But that’s just what the film’s story line, but what it’s about is so much more. And as a bonus, it’s all wrapped up in glorious Disney 3-D, a first for Pixar. Up is definitely a film of substantial style and substance.

It begins with Carl and Ellie, two kids in the 30s that share a love for real life adventure stories, especially ones featuring their favourite South American explorer Charles Muntz. Carl and Ellie grow up and get married and settle down into their happy life together. It’s a tribute to the unswerving skill of the Pixar’s storytellers that they’re able to cover the emotional ground of an entire marriage in one, simple montage and do it so effectively that there are actual tears in your eyes at the end. It’s quite an emotional wallop to start given that commercials advertised Up as a whimsical adventure. Still, it provides the emotional gravitas that carries the story through.

Carl Fredricksen (voice of Ed Asner) could be any old curmudgeon, in any neighbourhood, in any town across the land. When confronted with losing his home after losing his beloved wife, Carl, a former balloon salesman, decides to live his and his wife’s dream of travelling to South America. Killing two birds with one stone, he turns his house into a blimp by using thousands of colourful helium balloons and he takes off for Paradise Falls. But as we all know, Russell, the Wilderness Explorer, manages to accidentally stow away aboard the house. From there the adventure gets really crazy, including the return of Muntz (voiced by Christopher Plummer), who’s not quite the hero Carl and Ellie always thought he was.

The film is gifted with a tremendously light sense of humour, but it’s also got a deep well of pathos too. Sure you get talking dogs and the preposterous notion that a house can be lifted by any amount of helium balloons, but there’s a strong emotional core. Russell has an absentee father who’s more about promises than actual parenting; while Carl is struggling to make his late wife’s dream come true, never knowing that she was living her life’s adventure all along. Like WALL-E, there are some big thoughts underneath, but on the surface there’s the unyielding fun and excitement that any animated family movie should deliver. Several times through out the film, I found myself making the switch from light-hearted laughs to misty emotion that tugs on the heart strings.

Pixar’s recipe continues to serve them well: story first. On their own, each of this film’s story elements seem kind of desperate, and even after seeing preview clips earlier this year at New York Comic Con, I still wasn’t sure how it would all fit together. But Up is a sleek film that’s tied together beautifully. It’s a story about how it’s never too late to find your adventure, and how you’re never too young too make a difference in someone’s life. It’s about finding new friends in strange places, and how when sometimes things don’t end up how you expect, they can instead turn out better. Never short on colour and excitement, combined with a story starring characters you care about, Up is a captivating adventure film with or without 3-D. But if you can, go 3-D because that many balloons probably doesn’t even look half as good in real life.