We need to talk about this movie. It's my new favorite Pixar film, and might even be their best.

It combines all their greatest elements. It has to be one of their best "secret life of" concepts, and is definitely the one they do the most with besides maybe Monsters, Inc. It packs all the emotional punch of Up (I teared up four times) without that movie's dubious magic-beaning. Visually it's consistently inventive, and one sequence in particular, when Joy, Sadness and Bing-Bong stumble into the land of Abstract Thought, has to be the single cleverest bit of animation I've seen in a 3D animated film. Most important, it's a return to successfully exploring genuinely affecting subject matter, and this may in fact be their most mature exploration of a theme--namely, how sadness leads to empathy, and the intermingling of emotions both positive and negative is what makes us human and what helps us to be content.

In short, loved the hell out of it and will be seeing at least once more, probably twice. If Monsters U was the cough of Pixar's engine revving again, this is a true return to form, and one that matches if not exceeds the best of their efforts. I went in hoping it wouldn't be a Brave, and those expectations were blown away.