Of course, some films don’t require that suspension so much. Some films are so true-to-life that everything in them seems like it happened to you just yesterday. And many of those films are really boring.

Some films ask way too much in the way of suspension of disbelief. You try—you really do—to hold back that guffaw, that snide comment, that eventual standing-up-and-leaving-the-theater. It’s just stupid, sometimes, what these directors think they can make you think.

And then there are those films, those directors, those studios who know they are taking you for a ride, and you know it too, and you just let them do it. You just slip your childlike hand into theirs and you sit back in your slightly reclining theater seat, and away you go.

Pixar is one of those studios. Debuting with Toy Story (1995), the Pixar geniuses created a little boy’s bedroom and backyard that looked so real and familiar, we almost forgot they were animated. Mr. Potato Head sounded exactly they way we thought he’d sound; the plastic army men moved precisely how we had imagined they’d move. And although none of us grown-ups in the theater had ever owned Woody dolls or Buzz Light-Year, we suddenly really wished we had.

Then came A Bug’s Life (1998), and this time, while we laughed at and panicked over the heroic antics of insects, we were also amazed at Pixar’s rendering of grass blades and twigs. It all looked so real. Surely, if we were ant-size, then the world would definitely look like that.

Toy Story 2 (1999) was even better than its predecessor. Monster’s Inc.’s (2001) cleverness and wit found us quoting it again and again. And Finding Nemo (2003). Well. As a friend commented just today, “I never get tired of that movie.”

So we went on Saturday to see Pixar’s newest creation, Cars (200). A brand new release. The first great movie of the summer, they say. And we went to celebrate my seven-year-old’s success: just the week before, he had met his goal in reading 100 books.

Ah, Pixar. Take me. Take me to this otherworld you have created, a world that looks so much like mine but is somehow, nonetheless, the very escape I need. Yes, take me to a world populated by vehicles and only vehicles, where a car’s grill and windshield express the full gamut of human emotion, where even the mosquitoes droning against the fluorescent light turn out to be—you guessed it—miniature Volkswagen bugs.

Pixar couldn’t have created a better film for my son’s celebration. My boy wants to be a racecar driver someday, you see. He only two weeks ago attended his first-ever NASCAR race, and then there, in the movie theater, the entire spectacle was recreated, almost larger than life (it’s hard to get larger than NASCAR), and he sat spellbound.

But as is always the case with this studio, the genius goes further than a child’s entertainment. For there, reporting on the race, were two sports-announcer cars, and one of them (with a very familiar voice) was “Bob Cutlass.” We were delighted to make the acquaintance of a buck-toothed tow-truck named Mater (“As in ‘ta-mater’ without the ‘ta’”). And the scene involving tractor-tipping just might be the funniest thing you’ve seen since, well, cow-tipping.

Lightning McQueen’s fortuitous delay in the desert town of Radiator Springs affords him, and us, the opportunity for new and beautiful friendships, for stomach-aching laughter, and for some just-plain-serious soul-searching. And through it all, Pixar amazed me again and again with their ability to render clouds of dust behind tractors and racecars, or motes of dust in angles of morning light.

And when the movie ended, we were satisfied in the way a good book satisfies, or a varied and delicious meal or, say, a really good movie. We had a great time in the desert there, just off the old Route 66. It’s a journey I’d recommend to anyone, young or old. But I guess I’d be happy to go just about anywhere Pixar wanted to take me.