Inside Out Review

Pixar are more or less the undisputed kings of animation, at least in terms of western audiences, they have however been on something of a poor run of form recently, for some reason they followed a moderate success in Brave with 2 poor follow ups to earlier properties with Cars 2 and Monsters University, but perhaps they were saving themselves, perhaps they were taking every lesson they learnt and building up to this moment, Da Vinci had his Mona Lisa, Michelangelo had his David and Pixar have their Inside Out. The film centres on a simple idea, a young hockey loving girl called Riley moves from the Midwest to start a new life with her parents in San Francisco, but rather than follow Riley’s story on her own the film follows her as well as the emotions in her head. Those emotions are Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger. The emotions are ruled by Joy, who sees it as her duty to keep the other emotions in check in order to make sure that Riley is happy. The conflict comes from the emotional toll the move takes on Riley combined with the emotions she experiences whilst going through the change of childhood into teen years. Calamity ensues and Joy and Sadness become separated from the control centre leaving the other emotions to rule whilst Joy and Sadness take a journey through Riley’s mind in attempt to get back before everything goes wrong. Exploring the mind in cinema is a difficult task, you have to be able to present a world which has rules and logic but is also entertaining and something that the audience can digest. These seem like ideas that Kubrick or Nolan would attempt to tackle, yet when Pixar does it its effortless. The world building of Riley’s mind is seamless, and the balance between showing how the mind and events in the real world affect each other is masterful. It could be seen that when it comes down to it the film is an odd couple movie featuring Joy and Sadness on a journey together, but it’s about so much more than that. The film is predominantly about how to deal with emotion, not something that Riley learns but something that Joy learns, the revelation that she can’t always keep Riley happy is a beautiful moment and it builds up to a moment which realises how joy can come from sadness and that you can’t always be happy. It’s also a film about growing up and the loss of childhood, this is particularly noticeable in the heart-breaking scene featuring the loss of an imaginary friend. When Riley is first born the control panel is one button and the emotion that stands at it is Joy and all of her core memories are joyful ones, by the end of the film the control panel is complex, the facets or her personality become extensive, and her core memories are more than just joyful ones, showing that sad moments and fearful moments are as much a part in making us who we are as the happy ones. There are also brief glimpses into the minds of other characters such as Riley’s Mother and Father, and a hilarious moment where we see a teen boys control centre freak out when confronted with a girl. Those brief glimpses though pose a thousand questions as to why particular people are ruled by certain emotions. The film is also consistently funny; this isn’t the slapstick of Minons so really young children might not connect with it as much, but this doesn’t sell itself out for one second, just because its animation doesn’t mean it can’t be intelligent. The greatest compliment that I can pay to this film is that in the weeks since I’ve seen it I’ve looked at people in a different way because of how this film explored so many complex ideas. Pixar’s finest moment, and I hope to god it’s the first ever animated film to win best picture. (High 5 Stars)