Inside Out | Review
After enduring a five-year creative slump, Pixar is finally back – and with a wholly original film! Directed by Pete Docter, the mastermind behind ‘Monsters, Inc.’ and ‘Up’, ‘Inside Out’ is Pixar’s latest offering that takes place somewhere they hadn’t yet explored in any of their other films – the human mind. The stars here are five anthropomorphic emotions: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling); they live inside the mind of 11-year-old Riley Anderson. These emotions behave as Riley’s emotional guardians, attempting to provide the best for her through a central control system akin to the Star Trek bridge. At this “Headquarters,” Riley’s emotional experiences transform into orbs that get saved into long-term memory, thus adding to her personality; each orb is color coordinated, matching the emotion that the memory most identifies with (i.e. yellow = joy, blue = sadness, etc.). For most of her life, Riley’s memories and experiences are mostly joyful, so Joy – the character – is usually in command. However, when Riley has to go through a major lifestyle change, moving from Minnesota to San Francisco, problems arise.
Through a series of mishaps, Joy and Sadness get separated from Headquarters and from the rest of the emotions. While this is all happening, Riley is trying to adjust to her new life in San Francisco, which includes attending a new school and having to make new friends. So, we switch back and forth between what’s happening to Riley in the real world and what’s happening to her within the mind.
Conceptually, this is probably the most ambitious project from Pixar yet – and this includes ‘Wall-E’, which featured almost 30 minutes of absolutely no dialogue. Unfortunately, Docter and co. may have overreached. ‘Inside Out’ starts and ends wonderfully, but the whole middle section sags. There’s a lot to explore in ‘Inside Out’, but we don’t really get to see much of the mind world. The areas we do see – Dream Production,” “Imagination Land,” “The Train of Thought,” “Long-Term Memory” – are all interesting ideas in themselves, but they’re not enough. And honestly, I was left wanting more. This may have to do with the story’s central conflict. The stakes here are not really that big, and Joy and Sadness’ journey is too short-lived. I don’t think 94 minutes was enough time to spend in this world, and I would’ve loved to see the film extended to two hours.
Character-wise, they’re not as memorable as other classic offerings from Pixar. It’s obvious to see why Joy and Sadness are the main characters, but when the main characters are personifications of individual emotions, that means they’re literally one-dimensional; Anger is always angry, Fear is always fearful, and Sadness is always sad. Joy, as much as I love Amy Poehler, was borderline annoying for much of the film due to her overzealous nature, as well as her disheartening treatment of Sadness.
Even with these issues, Pixar is still Pixar, which means there’s still a lot of heart and humor packed into the film. I actually found that the adults laughed the most during the film, mostly because of its clever mind-based jokes that I won’t spoil here. The kids will mostly find humor in the slapstick. The character of Bing-Bong (Richard Kind), Riley’s imaginary friend, is probably the most interesting of the bunch, and it’s his scenes that tug the heartstrings the most. Also, I gotta give it up to Pixar for providing such a strong, female-centric film. The main duo here, Joy and Sadness, are both females, and Riley is too. And providing small details, like Riley’s love for hockey, is so great because it doesn’t fall into any gender stereotypes, which could have easily been the case.
I’m still pretty damn happy Pixar finally released an original film after so many sequels (‘Toy Story 3‘, ‘Cars 2’, ‘Monsters University‘). And even though ‘Brave‘ was an original film, it struggled to find a balance between its core Mother-Daughter storyline and slapstick humor; the Pixar magic just wasn’t there. ‘Inside Out’ is miles better than ‘Brave’ simply due to its crazily ambitious idea.
As usual with Pixar films, ‘Inside Out’ appeals to both children and adults. Though, I feel as if this film actually leans more towards the adults. The themes presented in this film are more mature, and kids may not understand it. But still, it’s a pretty ingenious theme theme that I can appreciate a “children’s film” for trying – the idea we must accept sadness as an important, and even healthy, aspect of life. It reminds me of ‘Monsters University’ and how its lesson was that you actually might not get what you want, that sometimes you have to accept your limitations.
‘Inside Out’ is a strong animated film, and pretty damn gorgeous as well. Story-wise, it may not be as strong as Pixar classics like ‘Toy Story’, ‘Finding Nemo’, ‘Ratatouille’, and ‘Wall-E’, but it’s still a lot better than the animated films offered by other major studios. I’d rather a film that takes risks and stumbles than a film that plays it safe, and the fact that Pixar is trying to do something other animation studios are not is why I can appreciate ‘Inside Out’ for everything that it gets right, even if I am left somewhat disappointed.
Three out of four Kent's.
PS: I loved the short film ‘Lava’ that played before ‘Inside Out’. It’s a love story that takes place across millions of years. The animation is beautiful, the song is catchy, and the characters are lovable.
PSS: Michael Giacchino has done it again with another memorable score. I love the film’s reoccurring melody; it’s simple, yet still elegant.
