Inside Out
Go! ...It's Pixar
Colourful exposition of growing up.
Over the 20 years since Toy Story, Pixar has consistently gifted us with charming and heartfelt modern fables. Everyone cried in WALL-E, and again in Up; everyone laughed through the subversive smarts of The Incredibles and the goofiness of Monsters, Inc.. We were all tickled orange and white by the adventures of Finding Nemo. Most refreshingly, in a world of sequels and remakes, Pixar has come up with brand new, layered stories and beguiling characters. Nevertheless, since their glorious run of unadulterated successes reached Toy Story 3 in 2010, Pixar's subsequent films of Cars 2, Brave and Monsters University have been solid, but not quite as majestic as their predecessors. All things said, a new Pixar movie is still a potentially seismic event, and Inside Out is aiming to take the studio back to its traditional, scintillating form.
Riley, an 11 year old girl begins an emotional evolution when her family moves from the simplicity of her life in Minnesota to the unfamiliar metropolis of San Fransisco. Riley, however, is not the main character as such, but the vehicle in which the main characters live. We are taken into her brain, and follow her five emotions of Joy, Anger, Sadness, Disgust and Fear, as they try to reconcile themselves with Riley's new life. The story focusses on Joy (Amy Poehler, Parks and Recreation) and Sadness (Phyillis Smith, The Office (US)), who get stuck outside Riley's emotional headquarters, leaving only Disgust, Fear and Anger to control her feelings at a challenging time. Lost in the maze of her brain, Joy and Sadness need to somehow work their way back to HQ before Riley loses all sense of herself and lapses into off-colour behaviour.
Given that reducing the sum of a girl's emotions into a series of bright characters is a fairly complicated endeavour, director Pete Docter (Up) and his team of animators have done a pretty impressive job. As ever, the animation is a brilliant and fluid combination of colour and detail. The different parts of her brain - core, long-term and discarded memories; imagination, personality, subconscious and dreams are crafted into vibrant landscapes and visual concepts; becoming characters in their own right. A huge effort has clearly been made to create a cohesive backdrop where the story makes sense and it is rich and playful when it comes together. Watching the consequences of the brain's activity play itself out in Riley's real life is both interesting and entertaining; accessible for children and adults alike. Some of the aspects of her personality are possibly given overly predictable treatment (such as a fear of clowns and a distaste for broccoli), but with so many potential complications and only so much time to explain everything, this was probably necessary and helps to keep things moving.
What is a little tricky and un-Pixar-like is a couple of the characterisations. Pixar characters invariably connect with their audience like tightly pressed logo bricks, reaching a higher lovability factor than a newborn baby playing with a kitten in a bucket of Nutella. Ironically, in Inside Out, it is the portrayal of the very emotions that Pixar is usually so good at making us feel that is the weakest part of the film. Fear, Anger and Disgust are secondary to the story, so their participation isn't too much of a concern. It is Joy who is most problematic. She often comes across as a sanctimonious, controlling, passive aggressive know-it-all with a huge sense of entitlement, and is persistently mean to and dismissive of Sadness. As theoretically competing emotions, this perhaps makes logical sense, but in practice it plays out very poorly given Joy's dominance of the screen. Poehler's sharp voice and condescending tone also exacerbate rather than manage the problem. She's often just a bit...Joyless. Furthermore, alongside Joy - and competing for the title of 'Most Annoying Pixar Character Ever' - is Bing Bong (voiced by the perennially whiny Richard Kind, The Producers). As Riley's long forgotten imaginary friend (who looks like an obese anteater with severe sunburn) he pops up presumably to lighten the mood, but generally adds to the aggravation already foisted on us by Joy.
That said, your heartstrings will mainly be pulled by Riley herself, rather than the voices in her head. It is the moments of Riley's upset and happiness; and the interaction with her parents where Pixar demonstrates that is still capable of lifting and whisking our emotions like a balloon caught in a light, warm breeze. I imagine that mothers and fathers sitting in the cinema with their own children would have found the film particularly profound. For those of us not in that position, there is still much to be endeared by.
So go. It's Pixar, so it's good. It might not quite be on the same level as their many masterpieces, but it admirably dances light-footedly with a complicated concept, and carries many of the hard-to-source ingredients that made their previous films so wonderful. Before the main feature, there is also the traditional Pixar short film. This time it's "Lava" - the story of a lonely, singing Hawaiian volcano who just wants another volcano to... "lava". It's sweet.
So go. It's Pixar, so it's good. It might not quite be on the same level as their many masterpieces, but it admirably dances light-footedly with a complicated concept, and carries many of the hard-to-source ingredients that made their previous films so wonderful. Before the main feature, there is also the traditional Pixar short film. This time it's "Lava" - the story of a lonely, singing Hawaiian volcano who just wants another volcano to... "lava". It's sweet.
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