The best Pixar movies on Disney+ (October 2022)

Pixar’s newest release went directly to Disney+. Set in a beautiful seaside town on the Italian Riviera, two worlds exist in constant fear of one another: The town above the sea and the town below the sea. But there will always be trailblazers, and when young Luca, who has always dreamt of seeing the surface, follows Alberto, a fellow “sea monster,” out of the water, he finds that the air magically turns them both into regular surface-dwelling humans. Unfortunately, if they get wet, they revert to their below-sea form. On land, the two boys team up with a surface girl to help her win a race in which the grand prize is a Vespa scooter, the perfect thing to take the boys away from their upsetting home lives. Luca is gorgeously animated, of course, and it’s a delightful coming-of-age tale. The clear romantic undertones between the two boys also mark a step — albeit a small one — toward greater inclusion in the Pixar world.

In most cases, a rat in the kitchen would be a nightmare. In Remy’s (Patton Oswalt) case, it’s a dream. Both for himself — a rat with an extremely sophisticated palate — and for the patrons at one of Paris’ finest (but faltering) restaurants. Remy finds an opportunity to reach his culinary dreams when he stumbles into the restaurant’s kitchen, fixing a soup, but gets caught by young human custodian Linguini in the process. To Linguini’s shock, the customers love the soup, and the staff quickly dub him a prodigy. Needing the job, Linguini forms a partnership with Remy to help the rat create extraordinary food and revitalize the restaurant’s image in Paris.

With a cast led by comedians Albert Brooks and Ellen Degeneres, Finding Nemo is one of the most transparently comedic movies in the Pixar repertoire. However, it’s also one of the more socially conscious films as well, with a subtle message of conservation enduring throughout clownfish Marlin’s (Brooks) epic search across the ocean to find his lost son, Nemo. As Pixar’s first film set beneath the sea, the visuals in this one are breathtaking and remind us not just of the ocean’s beauty but of its essential nature to the planet. Plus, with characters like the absent-minded Dory, surfer bro sea turtles, and vegetarian sharks, the trip to P. Sherman 42 Wallaby Way Sydney is a load of fun.

Perhaps Up‘s greatest claim to fame is how fast it makes you start crying your eyes out. With one of the most touching, heart-wrenching, tidy opening scenes of any film, Up takes you through the entire lifecycle of a relationship and establishes the character dynamics and narrative fuel that will power the entire film in about five minutes. It’s a rare film that starts you in tears and uplifts you throughout the rest of the story. Literally, as it happens, as the story follows an elderly gentleman who attaches enough balloons to his home to fly away to the paradise he never managed to visit with his wife while she was alive. There are laughs aplenty, too, but Up is one of the tear-jerking films in the Pixar repertoire for both sad and joyous reasons.