Inside Out is the 15th film from Pixar Studios since its dawn in 1995. We all love them for their highly praised films like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Up, Monsters Inc., Ratatouille, and The Incredibles, but since the spawn of the decade, Pixar has had trouble attaining the same level of brilliance that we had been so used to. Excluding Toy Story 3, the three releases of the decade, Brave, Monsters University, and Cars 2 (especially Cars 2) were quite disappointing. Maybe Pixar was running out of ideas?
Lesson: Pixar can't run out of ideas.
I'll be honest with you: when I saw the trailer for this movie, I wasn't too fond of the idea. Though it was original, I didn't think it was necessarily good in the sense that it couldn't pull through a full two hours while still being entertaining.
I was completely wrong.
Let's begin.
The story takes place inside a girl named Riley's mind. There are five characters in her brain which represent her emotions. The characters are Joy (Amy Pholer), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Anger (Lewis Black). Ultimately, whatever actions these anthropomorphized emotions do on the control board in the headquarters are translated to real life and imposed onto Riley.
The casting was impeccable. They did a wonderful job visualising the perfect voice for teach emotion. Of course, Amy Pholer played Leslie Knope on NBC's Parks and Recreation, Phyllis Smith played Phyllis Lapin alongside Mindy Kaling as Kelly Kapoor on NBC's Parks and Recreation. In the movie, Joy is the undisputed leader of the crew, just like Leslie Knope is within the Pawnee Parks and Recreation Department. Both are positive and yellow (Pholer WAS blonde) people who seem to never run out of energy, but still can get discouraged and dejected from time to time. Both work tirelessly to attain their goal while carrying a lackluster workforce.
Then there's Sadness vs. Phyllis. Phyllis was always the weird one in the office. She just seemed boring, which helped her character play a great role in the dynamic of the show. For the most part, she seemed like the sad sack Sadness was. Well, except when she was with Bob Vance.
Riley had been skating for all her life, so it is only right that she loves hockey. At the time the rising action she is 11 years old and is about to move to San Francisco from Minnesota. On the car ride, she is filled with hope, nut as they pull up to their new home, she is clearly disappointed because Fear, Disgust, and Anger are all terrified by the attributes of the house. The climax starts when Sadness is unable to control her urge to try and "help" around, but just ends up messing everything Sadness and Joy go up a recall tube by accident with the core memories, which makes Riley vulnerable to losing the personality islands of Friendship, Family, Honesty, and Hockey. Sadness and Joy must locate their way through an endless maze of Riley's long term memories to get back to headquarters. On the way, they find and befriend Bing Bong, Riley's forgotten imaginary friends who hel
What I especially liked about this movie is that it never invented an idea in the middle of the movie just for the convenience of the story. For example (SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS), when the mine-workers push the song-powered rocket into the Memory Dump, we all felt empathy towards Bing Bong because it meant something to him, but when Bing Bong and Joy end up in the Memory Dump we had no idea how they would get out.(SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS). It shows you how something so minor in this movie could be so significant. It was so wonderfully pieced together There are other examples that I could bring up, but I don't want to ruin too much of the plot if you all want to see it.
It also shows how we as young children can develop our mind. For instance, in the beginning, the only two characters in her mind were Joy and Sadness. Those were the only two emotions that we could have had at such a young age. As she became older, she gained Fear, then Anger, and finally Disgust. Near the end, she is able to comine emotions into one memory, which explains the Yellow and Blue core memory. This is key because as we saw when Joy was in the Dump, it was evident that empathy is required to make a happy memory. As Joy replayed the memory, we see that Riley was dejected because she missed the game winning shot, but he is then happy because her team still came and lifted her up. Near the end, we see new islands, like "Tragic Vampire Romance" Island and Fashion Island. When they get the new control board, there is a button called puberty, which they are bewildered by.
So in the end, this movie was a masterpiece and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I rate it: 9.8/10
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