Movie Review: Inside Out
Rating: 3 Stars
Before Pixar’s writer/director Pete Docter could perfect his animated family-friendly exploration of the human experience with Soul, he wrote and directed the literal emotional rollercoaster Inside Out.
The Inside Out sequel is fast approaching so I was implored to give the 2015 film a look on Disney Plus. Pixar has had a strange track record as of late and Inside Out was wedged between moderately inspired sequels (Monsters University, Cars 3) and films that never really took off (Brave, The Good Dinosaur).
Inside Out culturally has felt like Pixar’s biggest hit since Up but I don’t think it has the emotional staying power of Coco or Soul.
The irony in that last statement is that Inside Out is a film where emotions come to life and we’re privy to how they operate within our heads. I can see parents who have teenage children reacting strongly as they watch a familial relationship struggle through a big move.
I can also see imaginative children getting a kick out of emotions becoming sentient beings that live in their head. It’s that same wonder I had when watching Toy Story and considering my toys going on adventures while I was doodling and daydreaming at grade school. There are also existential questions kids could ask themselves. Are we truly in control of our emotions or is a little red guy in our head with the voice of Lewis Black setting off our rage temperament? Maybe we as adults could ponder the same thing…
Pete Docter provides that Pixar storytelling ingenuity of taking a complex idea and simplifying it with relative ease. Docter chooses five key emotions to do the heavy lifting. Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, Anger. The vehicle for these emotions is a young girl named Riley.
Riley was a happy child growing up in Minnesota but her parents decide to move and take on the big city of San Francisco. The film opens by setting the ground rules for how Joy (Amy Poehler) runs a smooth operation managing to keep Sadness (Phyllis Smith) in check while Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) pick optimal moments to guide Riley through conflict and adversity.
Moving into their new home and entering a new school is a stressful endeavor for Riley. Her emotions are conveyed as such and brief flashes into her parents' emotions provide some great laughs.
Inside Out’s greatest flaw is its contrivance to make Riley an emotionless husk. Joy and Sadness are whisked out of Riley’s head along with her core memories which are key to her personality. As Riley’s core memories fade, her personality crumbles. I appreciate the connective tissue in the storytelling and the drama that ensues, but the manner in which this event occurs felt more like happenstance rather than inspired storytelling.
No shortage of thought and effort went into creating a sensible corollary world existing in our heads. Joy and Sadness discover Riley’s imaginary friend Bing Bong perusing her memory library. Bing Bong represents Riley’s childlike imagination which becomes more dormant as she grows older. There are also memory workers who act like miners deciding which memories to erase and which to send to her brain.
Joy inevitably learns that Sadness is a key part of having a complex personality and no one can go through life joyous at every moment. This aspect of the film is well-told no matter how contrived I may have found Joy and Sadness’s predicament to be.
Inside Out does create a fun storytelling environment with plenty of sequel potential. Inside Out 2 promises the addition of new emotions like anxiety, embarrassment, and envy. While those are all emotions a teenager experiences, it may make driving home a cohesive narrative more difficult for director Kelsey Mann.
