Pixar make some great films it's their mastery of character and innovative concepts that really sets them apart. In this film we have curmudgeonly old man Carl Fredrickson (voiced by Edward Asner) who has dreamed of adventure his whole life but mainly lived a quiet life.

Now he is alone and isolated living out his remaining years in his house which property developers want to buy off him. They manage to get Carl sent off to an old peoples home so he decides to follow his dreams of adventure and escapes … up (credit to byrn for that line). Along the way he picks up Russell (voiced by Jordan Nagai) who is a wilderness scout (I guess the boy scouts would have sued) and the two of them are thrown together on this grand adventure.

This is a wonderful flight of fantasy, the old man doing the unthinkable setting off on an adventure. Meeting friends and enemies along the way. The two main characters both lonely in their own ways Fredrickson missing his wife and Russell desperate for the approval of his father. It has a wonderful story arc and the characters development along the way is wonderful. It's funny, touching, sad, uplifting, and exciting taking you through the gamut of emotions.

The graphics are superb the characters stylized but very well put together managing to really be invested in the story and the characters. The film is colourful and beautiful the various show pieces from the city to the jungle. Pixar seem to always know how to make their characters relatively simple models with just the suggestion of features yet give the wonderful expressive qualities.

Of course the voice cast helps this and it's a pretty good one. They play the parts giving you plenty to make the characters believable.

We saw this film in polarised 3D which though a bit of a gimmick adds to the experience though most of the time once the film is going you don't even notice it's just the odd moments.

All in all it's a wonderful film while maybe not Pixar's best it's still pretty good and great fun for all the family. Well worth seeing.

The third "family" film of the day, we say Up in 3D-o-vision. Thanks to booking hours ahead (we buy all our tickets at the start) we had seats right in the centre and as a result the 3D effect was good. I thought it added to the film throughout, although not in a major way, but it did help a little with immersion.

Right. That's the 3D out of the way.

Up is another Pixar CGI film, and continues in their run of good ones. The visual style is caricatured realism backed up with very good animation (as it has to be really).

The background of the story is delivered in a quick but very comprehensive manner, giving a real insight into the main character. Then he's pushed the last inch and he heads off in a somewhat rash manner to the adventure he never quite got round to.

He meets a number of individuals on the way, each bringing their own angle to the comedy and the situation, which goes from humdrum to absurd (in a good way) at the start of the adventure and remains pegged there from that point on.

Of the three family films we saw today (9, Fantastic Mr. Fox and this) I think this is comfortably the best, it was fun from start to end and was thoroughly enjoyable.