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Pixar’s latest from Disney is just about as joyful as a corporate entertainment could be. Similar -- but preferable -- to Avatar in two ways, this 3-D animated feature (I would definitely see it in a 3-D theater if it came around again) is a mash-up of many familiar movie tropes, but with coherence and depth of emotion. The brilliant opening is reminiscent of Citizen Kane’s famous breakfast table anatomy of a marriage, in its swift and almost wordless portrayal of a lifetime shared by Carl and Ellie. We pick up with Carl as a cranky, square-jawed, white-haired widower voiced by Ed Asner. Though drawn together as children by a passion for a Lindbergh-like character with the message “Adventure is out there!”, the couple leads a quiet stay-at-home life that leaves the bereft Carl full of regret for the adventures they never had. As skyscrapers encroach on Carl and Ellie’s tidy “Little House,” just as on Virginia Lee Burton’s, Carl escapes by lifting the house into the sky with millions of colored balloons, reminiscent of Howl’s Moving Castle (and indeed the whole film is deeply imbued with the spirit of Miyazaki). He winds up with a stowaway boy scout, a rotund tyke who might be a refugee from Wall-E. As you would expect, adventure ensues, which I will leave you to discover for yourself. But I will take especial note of a mythical bird of paradise -- large, lithe, and brightly-hued -- and a pack of dogs with collars that hilariously translate dog-thought into English. The action cranks up, as it must, but not in a way that wearied me, as some otherwise admirable animated films have done, and returns at last to the quiet warmth of feeling that is the film’s hallmark. Plenty of “oh wow!” in this movie, but its miracle is in the expressiveness of its characters’ cartoon faces. (2009, dvd.) *8* (MC-88)