Pixar returns after a 1 year gap with this literal look inside the mind of a child, Riley. We see her emotions personified into Joy, Anger, Fear, Disgust and Sadness.
The initial few minutes of Inside Out set the scene out in a simple, easy to digest manner. We see Riley at her birth and the simultaneous birth of her simplest emotions, which take control of her. Memories are created and assigned an emotion, represented by a colour, then stored. It’s almost heavy-handed by Pixar standards but this approach quickly starts to make sense as the film goes on.
Everything goes swimmingly until Riley gets knocked for six with a move to San Francisco; a far cry from her native Minnesota. Her friends and interests all get up-rooted and she considers running away. Meanwhile inside, her emotions are equally out of whack as Joy gets knocked off the controls by a traumatic event.
What a beautiful, original, heartfelt piece of work this is. Docter delves deep into the human condition while somehow pulling off an entertaining family adventure. It’s best not to think too much about the logic of what’s going on; just like the real brain, the actual processes that create memories and personality are fuzzy and chaotic.
Inside Out isn’t afraid to make choices that will make people cry out ‘that doesn’t make sense!’. That’s because it has instead chosen to operate on a higher plane, exploring the reasons behind our actions and reactions to certain events, our motivations in life and dealing with trauma. If you’re worrying that they only picked five emotions to deal with, you’re missing the point.
The film runs mostly on metaphor, and with that it visits previously unexplored territory in children’s cinema. For instance the suggestion that sadness can often be what helps us through difficult times is not something that sells Minion toys in happy meals; but the film makers don’t seem to care. It’s OK to be sad. Sometimes it’s the only way we can feel anything at all.
There’s also a running commentary on how memories affect every part of our lives, from our current mood, our personality, to how we interact with other people. Docter manages to explain the importance of memories, and equally the importance of loading them with emotion. Simply by changing the ‘colour’ of a memory he’s saying that what one remembers is always defined by how one remembers.
The real stroke of genius is that these relatively complex themes are set to the bright, colourful backdrop of Riley’s mind. The set design and art direction are gorgeous and tie the whole thing together nicely. Pixar seems to be the only major animation studio that genuinely cares about how every frame looks, and here that attention to detail only adds to the film.
One other more ‘technical’ aspect that stands out is the inspired choices for the voice performances. These people haven’t been picked because they are big names, it’s because they fit the bill perfectly. Amy Poehler and Phyllis Smith play Joy and Sadness respectively and their work is a large part of what makes the film so memorable.
On a personal level, I found this to be one of the most fascinating, profound experiences I’ve had from a film. There is so much more to talk about, so much more to be uncovered, that I feel like I cannot do it justice in words.
Another smart, entertaining, emotional masterpiece from the studio.
The minute I heard about this film, I couldn't contain my fangirling. Pixar + emotional psychology = my favourite things. This film didn't disappoint. The creativity in this film is inspirational. The personality islands, imagination land, long-term memory, even the train of thought. The way it expresses these ideas of how the mind works is magical. Not to mention the way it represents depression. I think this is ground-breaking in establishing an understanding in both how depression works and empathy for how it might feel. It also doesn't actually make a big deal out of it. It treats the subject as a matter of fact, which is such an important message as it is so normal. It will make people think about how their mind works, which emotions run their mind, what their personalities are based on etc. It's so though-provoking but also heart-warming and fun. The characters have some quippy dialogue which brings the entertainment value to colourful and well-thought out world of Riley's mind. I'm debating whether the characters of the emotions get any depth as, as you can imagine, it would be quite hard if their based on a sole emotion however with Joy and Sadness, this is explored a little. What made me well up a bit and I think it's gonna be so impactful to it's audience is how they discover the importance of Sadness. And well, all the emotions. This is so important to teach children and I think this could be a great start for some mental wellbeing lessons. Pixar have truly outdone themselves.
So after I saw inside out, I thought the movie was very meh... This however does not mean I think this movie is bad, I just don't think it is that good. Let's first look at the characters, which already limit the capacity of storytelling possible in this movie. Joy is very clearly the main character of this story and the audience has to use her as an anchor. Thankfully, this character has an arch. It would have been easier to make her a carbon cut out like the rest of them but I was please to see that she had some sort of character development. And by "some sort" I mean bare minimum, because quite honestly I could not see myself caring about any of the other characters. Which is a problem in a movie about emotions. Each one of the characters represents an emotion, meaning that we can assume the characters will react one way and one way only. It does make it simple for a child to understand, but let me just say that i'm not aiming this review for children. If I was at a younger age where my brain was less developed, then i'm sure I would have loved this. But i'm not. So seeing an incredibly un-original and predictable movie at every turn just does not do it for me. The only characters they could have fleshed out are the parents and we barely get any screen time with them at all. I'm not saying you have to develop every character on screen, but they really couldn't develop one? Even the main girl doesn't have any character. Especially considering she is being micromanaged by five other flat characters. Now, I will say this movie is "unconventional" for a pixar movie, but for a normal movie I would say that this was fairly un-original. I am sure many of us have seen this concept done to death. Even the story has been done a million times. Overall, this sticks to the cliché "Disney movie" formula by not making a bad movie, just a predictable one. The animation was fine and it was shot well. But for me, this is a sign that Disney and pixar really need to step up their game and experiment more. Writing characters with the emotional complexity of the 7 dwarves is something any can do. They need to try new things. Because watching characters going on an adventure, is not an adventure if you can see a predetermined path going from point A to point B. If you have any comments or disagreements, please bring them forth. You just may change my mind.
[9.8/10] The best compliment I can give Inside Out is that it would still be a great movie if you lopped half of it off. There’s a worthwhile story to be told about an eleven-year-old girl moving halfway across the country and struggling with the adjustment. The emotional beats of Riley feeling like she has to put on a happy face for the good of her parents, buckling under the pressure, and deciding to run away are compelling and poignant on their own.
Likewise, if Inside Out were just a romp through the mind of a child, it would still be uproarious and inventive to the last. The movie works just as well as a buddy picture, with Joy and Sadness traipsing around the infinite, colorful labyrinth, leaping over obstacles both literal and metaphorical, and eventually finding common ground. You could take each of these stories, make it the whole movie, and still create something wonderful and stirring.
But the beauty of the film, and one of the things that makes it so special, is the way those two pieces of its story work together in tandem to produce something greater than either could individually. Riley’s struggles mirror Joy’s struggles and vice versa. The obstacles in the real world translate to obstacles in the internal world, and what affects one affects the other. There’s a stunning synergy to the story the film tells, where each element of the movie is made better, more complete, and more unique, by being a piece of the whole.
That is the glory of marrying a tale of a personified emotion straining to keep a positive attitude while trying to retrieve and restore her girl’s core memories while making her way through a dizzying unknown place, with one of a young girl straining to keep a positive attitude while trying to settle in and find a new sense of comfort and belonging while making her way through a dizzying unknown place. One locale is the inner workings of a child’s brain, and the other is San Francisco, but it’s up for debate which is scarier or more bewildering.
Even more impressive is how seamless Inside Out is in the effort. There’s never a moment in the movie that feels dull, irrelevant to story or character, or incapable of provoking an emotional response. That response may be delight at the wondrous worlds crafted by co-directors Pete Docter, Ronnie del Carmen, and Pixar’s peerless creative team, melancholy at the film’s many heart-rending moments, or laughter at its brilliant comic routines, but by god, everything in the film works and works together. The movie can jump from Joy’s escapades, to Riley’s first day of school, to the rest of the gang’s antics back at HQ without missing a beat or taking anything away from the picture.
Part of that owes to the brilliant structure and framing of the film, but much of it owes to impeccable casting. Richard Kind nearly steals the show as Bing Bong, Riley’s goofy yet heartfelt imaginary friend, and young Kaitlyn Dias does a stellar job conveying the realness of what poor Riley is going through. If that weren’t enough, I’m not sure there’s ever been a better match between performer and character than for Riley’s emotions. Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Lewis Black, Mindy Kalig, and Bill Hader are, literally and figuratively, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear personified.
The film’s humor, whether slapstick, situational, or downright absurd, soars with such ringers on board. Borrowing from the NBC comedy bench also gives the film a chance to inject real character in moments big and small. But Poehler is the star here. As Parks and Recreation fans know, she’s capable of turning from bubbly optimism to goofball comedy to heartstring-tugging pathos on a dime. Joy, ironically enough, provides her a vehicle to show her full range, and humanizes the little sprite’s can-do spirit and blind spots. While backed by a flawless ensemble, Poehler anchors the film and does so with literal flying colors.
It’s easy to shine with such a bright and imaginative world to explore. The inside of Riley’s mind provides Pixar’s animators and dream-weavers an opportunity to go wild in visualizing the internal processes of the human brain. Interludes in a zone for abstract thought, an imagination land, a movie studio that makes dreams, and a valley of subconscious nightmares allow the film’s creative to let loose in conjuring up clever, amusing, and eye-catching representations of these functions and show off the studio’s aesthetic abilities without limitation.
It doesn’t just exist for the sake of empty, if stunning, spectacle though. Docter and fellow screenwriters Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley use the half-magical, half-industrial space to both convey the inner workings of Riley’s experiences and to set up the world and rules that Joy and her fellow mind-workers live by that inform both journeys. Details like the actual train of thought, the Memory Dump, the control panel that dictates Riley’s actions, the way her core memories connect with different personality islands, all create setups and payoffs. They matter to Joy’s efforts to escape from memory storage and return to headquarters, and to her eventual epiphany and means to solve both her and Riley’s problems in unison.
That synergy pays off narratively too, as Riley’s rough experiences tear those islands asunder and make it harder for Joy to make it back home, while a control panel operated without Joy or Sadness creates more of those experiences, in a feedback loop that threatens all our heroes. And that solution turns out to be the one thing both Joy and Riley have been trying to avoid, contain, and suppress this entire time -- Sadness.
It’s what got Joy into this mess in the first place. She tried to prevent Sadness from affecting Riley’s core memories, and the pair were sucked up and stranded in the process. The whole journey, Joy tries to hinder her erstwhile partner from interfering, poo poos her suggestions, and treats her as a burden rather than a resource.
And yet, over the course of the journey, she sees the good that Sadness can do, in practical and more metaphorical terms. Bing Bong is stymied and incapable of showing them the way until Sadness acknowledges his hurt and shows him empathy. His tear-earning sacrifice represents loss but also growth through that loss. Joy and Sadness’s favorite memory turns out to be the same, one that had measures of both of them, where Riley lost the big game and felt the shame and difficulty of that, but through those things, received comfort from her parents and a cheering celebration from her friends.
That is the cinch of Inside Out. Just as the two halves of the film -- Riley in the real world and Joy in the mental one -- would work well on their own but work spectacularly together, so too do Joy and Sadness go together and create beauty in unexpected ways. Joy realizes that allowing your unhappiness to show rather than bottling it up lets the people who care about you know that you need help, and that, in turn, gets you back to a place of warmth and jubilation. Hurt is not the enemy of happiness; it’s a bridge to help you reach it.
There’s something simple but bold in that acknowledgement, that negative emotions are not meant to be shunned or shuffled off to the side, but embraced and processed as a necessary and vital part of being a fully-formed human. It’s telling that the true looming threat in Inside Out isn’t sadness or pain, but rather numbness. These hardships send Riley into a small depression, where her control panel grays out, leaving her incapable of feeling anything or reaching out for the help she needs.
It takes both Joy and Sadness to overcome that, to work in concert to get back to headquarters and give Joy’s blue counterpart the wheel to make Riley feel again. This feeling leads Riley to a confession to her parents of how much she misses her old home and how much she’s struggling in her new one. That, in turn, prompts expressions of sympathy, shared hardship, and ultimately solace from her parents, as they embrace their daughter and give her the comfort and support she needs.
From there, a miracle happens. To this point, all of Riley’s memories have been color-coded according to the emotion that generated them, wholly red or green or otherwise to signify the sentimental shading. But this moment of great hurt followed by greater comfort and acceptance produces one that is swirled yellow and blue, representing the way this new core memory carries both joy and sadness at once and marking a turning point in Riley’s growing maturity and understanding.
Those negative feelings are not meant to be compartmentalized, but rather embraced, to make us more complete and fulfilled human beings. The combination of joy and sadness isn’t bittersweetness. It is, instead, catharsis, the processing of our toughest moments in our acceptance of them, so that our loved ones know we’re hurting, so that we can deal with those complicated emotions that are not black and white, and so that we can experience the rich fullness of life in all its different hues and shades, rather than hobble ourselves in pursuit of happiness alone.
Just as Joy and Riley’s stories are inextricable from one another and make Inside Out a better film for their combined hardships and glories, so too do joy and sadness work in concert with one another within ourselves, making us better and more satisfied people. That is the grand, animating inside of this near-perfect film -- a cinematic achievement that mixes so many distinctive visions and imaginative adventures and real life difficulties together -- and finds something beautiful and profound when it brings them together.
Pixar goes cerebral, visualizing hormones and emotions as walking, talking avatars in the mind of a pre-teen girl. Shaken by a cross-country move at a very sensitive age, we see her struggle from both perspectives: in the upstairs control room, where various color-coded operators are baffled by her mood swings, and in the outside world, where friends and family are similarly perplexed. Inside Out is a high-concept production, one which does occasionally beat us over the head with symbolism, but its writing is generally sharp and clever and it’s adept at distilling lofty ideas to a format that’s digestible for all ages. And Pixar certainly knows how to tug the heart strings, as they do repeatedly during the dueling inside/outside crises at the film’s climax.
Not as consistent as the studio’s better efforts, the plot is a balancing act between moments where the philosophical gambles pay off and those where it gets a little too cute. The vital push-and-pull between Hope and Sadness is at the heart of things, an uneasy friendship/rivalry that tips and sways before reaching a state of zen, and that’s handled very well. The two abstract creatures’ escape through the long-term memory banks and bumpy rides on the train of thought... eh, those felt like more of a reach. A convenient use of familiar terms to suit the narrative.
When they work, Inside Out’s big concepts are deep and powerful; an elegant way to dissect complicated thoughts and feelings by way of shiny blue, gold and purple cupie dolls. When they don’t, the illusion swiftly falls apart. Before the story concludes, we get plenty of the former, but also a not-insignificant helping of the latter. A nice rebound from the missteps of Cars 2 and Monsters University, but not quite as sweeping, engulfing, or rewarding as the pillars of the studio’s classic catalog.
Review by DityBlockedParent2015-06-17T18:32:29Z
While the trailers and adverts might make this seem like it's a happy romp, it's not. Believe me it's not. This, in my opinion, is a very sad film. It took me by surprised me and made me remember aspects of my childhood I don't normally keep at the forefront of my mind. This is despite the comedy and the happy joy-joy attitude seen for about 50% of the film. I really related to Riley, so much so that I actually cried quite a bit at the theatre. I felt a bit embarrassed but I really couldn't help it. It wasn't the acts in the film that made me sad, it was the explanation afterwards. Riley's motivations. Hearing it in words after seeing everything broke me. A Disney film hasn't made me cry like that ever.
You absolutely have to see Inside Out. But, don't go into it looking for it to put a smile on your face after a bad day. It's a really emotional ride. However, the message in the end is really worth it. It's a message that we should really get across to the children of today. I wish the message being put forward by this movie was being aimed at children back when I was a kid. It would have really helped. It would have indeed.