The merging of beloved animation studio Pixar with Disney had the
expected effect: more sequels, more spinoffs, less of that creative ingenuity
that gave us Up, Wall-E, and the Toy Story movies. That's not to say Pixar forgot
how to touch our hearts in the meantime; far from it, actually. When it comes
to the joyous and fearful touchstones that mark the passage of childhood,
themes visited in everything from Toy
Story to Monsters, Inc., Pixar has
proven themselves uniquely attuned. When Inside
Out was announced with some
great fanfare a few years ago, it seemed like the kind of wildly ambitious idea
the studio hadn't attempted in quite a while. That was reason enough to be
excited, but that it would center largely on the emotions of a single
adolescent girl put it right in their emotional wheelhouse.
Everyone wanted Inside Out to be another Pixar classic, but it
more than exceeds our lofty expectations. In the same way director Pete
Docter's Toy Story took a goofy concept (living toys!)
and made us look at our childhoods differently, Inside Out forces us to reexamine the way our
emotions shape who we are. Equal parts sympathetic and nutty, the story takes
us inside the amusement park mind of 11-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias), a happy
Minnesota girl who loves hockey, her close friends, and her parents. But when
the father's job forces them to uproot and move to San Francisco, everything
changes in ways she's not prepared for. While following Riley's not-so-smooth
transition would probably be interesting enough in Docter's capable hands,
we're instead taken into the control center of her brain where her emotions are
personified by Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis
Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Fear (Bill Hader). Joy, who literally glows
with fairy-like glee, has known Riley the longest and is sort of the de facto
leader. With her in charge, all five emotions work like a well-oiled machine;
controlling her moods as well as keeping track of Riley's memories, and it's in
dealing with her memories that things start to spin out of control. Most of her
emotions do as we would expect them to. Fear is naturally a big wuss; Disgust
looks at everything skeptically; Anger is always hot-headed (literally), and
Joy can be counted on to be optimistic about everything. But the ever-morose
Sadness has no real place, and Joy certainly doesn't want her around tainting
happy memories. It's in trying to keep Sadness away that things begin to go
haywire, with Joy and Sadness trapped in the deeper recesses of Riley's mind.
Inside Out is perhaps Pixar's most complicated
narrative, and Docter's screenplay (co-written with Ronnie del Carmen) isn't so
smooth is setting up this vibrant but intricate world. Riley's memories are
represented by glowing marbles, but her "core memories" are special
and power key facets of her personality. These are represented by floating
islands (such as Hockey, Family, and Goofball) that look like theme parks, and
we haven't even begun to talk about her long-term memory, subconscious, and
other parts of Riley's mental framework. When these core memories get lost,
it's up to Joy and Sadness to wander her Long Term Memory, retrieve them and
return to Headquarters, and while all of this is going on Riley is trying and
failing to deal with multiple changes out in the real world. When Disgust tries
to emulate Joy, the result is an uncharacteristically sarcastic Riley
Once Joy and Sadness' quest begins, there
is scarcely a moment when Inside Out stops amazing you on just about every
level. Each new land is as imaginative as the last, and we see them
venturing through Dreamland, which is naturally a giant movie studio; the two
hop on the constantly-moving Train of Thought, and pass through Abstract
Thought where they temporarily become 2D constructs. Meanwhile, there are tons
of clever gags that will only become funnier the more one thinks about them. An
annoying "double mint gum" jingle constantly emerges from the long
term memory when least expected. Blame the brain's hardhat-wearing workers for
why you can't remember phone numbers anymore, "They're in her phone",
they say while erasing them completely from Riley's memory. Going deep into the
subconscious, Joy and Sadness also encounter Riley's long-forgotten imaginary
friend, Bing Bong (Richard Kind), who cries tears of candy and rides a magical
rocket powered by song. If Bing Bong's story, one that has echoes of Toy Story coursing through it, doesn't melt your
heart then nothing else will.
Pixar, and specifically Docter, know how
to tug at our heartstrings and fill us with recollections of our own
childhoods. Inside Out forces us to
feel these things while taking us on a deliriously bizarre adventure inside
Riley's mind, while on the outside the story is decidedly more serious, and
presented in a way kids can understand. That's not to say Riley's situation is
treated with kid gloves, though. Those who are Riley's age will understand her
isolated feelings as the new girl in school, her hesitation about joining a new
hockey team, and the anger she feels when an old friend appears to have moved
on. With her emotions literally steering her every move, though, Riley does
begin to come across for a while like a robot being controlled rather than a
human making real decisions.
Fortunately, the film keeps getting better
and better, and while it may literally be about our emotions never does it feel
emotionally manipulative. Incredibly funny and remarkably moving, Inside Out is easily Pixar's best film since Toy Story 3. Not only
can it make you laugh but it will tickle your brain.
Rating: 4 out of 5
