I have, in the past, been mildly critical of Pixar in ways that people have referred to (wrongly) as “insane” or a “bizarre vendetta.” But it’s not my fault that they’ve mostly made shitty movies that get wildly overpraised, from the bland insipidity of Toy Story to the cheap satire of WALL-E. The only exception in their whole oeuvre was The Incredibles, which managed to be an actually pretty good movie.

Up, though, turns out against all expectations to be a great movie. I mean, honest-to-god excellent.

It is everything that Pixar’s other movies haven’t been. It discards all the jokey modern allusions that have plagued animation since Robin Williams’ genre-destroying turn in Aladdin; and while it has its inevitable moments of cheap physical humour, they’re rare and don’t detract too much from it.

But mostly what Up has is characters that it makes you care about, and a sense of loss that suffuses the whole film. This is the most emotionally intense movie I’ve seen in years.

So anyway, because it’s a Pixar movie, everyone’s already awarded it the A++ 100% Two Thumbs Up 10/10 Would Buy Again reviews that all Pixar movies automatically get. But this time, the movie deserves it, and this is the sort of timeless classic that I didn’t think Pixar could make.