Pixar has finally regained its mojo! After five years and two disappointments Pixar returned to its roots, namely by making a movie they wanted to see and telling the Wal-Mart crowd to suck it! As for Brave and Monsters U., if they were Dreamworks flicks, they’d be good but since they bore Pixar’s name, those two also sucked.
I’m not going to blather on about the premise, the trailer covered it very well so it’s not a mystery. The idiot chatter “showing” how Pixar movies are a series of things having feelings is lazy. What I do want to go on is the execution which is why I gave this a Must See (plus I need to go over my past rankings because I’ve goofed on previous posts).
Inside Out starts off fantastically through the casting: Lewis Black as Anger, he practically is anger incarnate on the Daily Show. The unsung champ call was Kyle MacLachlan as Riley’s dad, he has a great deep, “dad” voice. Others you’ll watch to for due to them being brief cameos. Next, there are numerous jokes little kids won’t understand, one directed at the San Francisco residents. Another element I loved, the islands of Riley’s personality. These represent key parts of “who is Riley?” Hockey, Family, Friendship, Honesty and Goofiness (she is only 11). The adventure segment gives you a tour through the little girl’s mind: long-term memories, ear worms, dreams, abstract thought and what happens to unused memories. These are all represented through the animation as tangible places and creatures, almost like a theme park.
I recently caught an interview of Pete Docter on Fresh Air too. Besides being a key director, he co-wrote the story. He mentioned how the Pixar staff researched the Science behind thought and emotion. Much of the concepts were based upon Dr. Paul Ekman, a scientist whose research states there are six core emotions and Inside used five (hence the characters’ names), the missing one is surprise but I think they rolled it into Fear and Joy. Good thing Ekman has only six, Docter said some argue there are as many as 27. The key to Pixar’s success with the actual science? They didn’t over think it. Plot trumped reality, namely with how memory works; recently I’ve learned from Inquiring Minds that “replaying” them alters the outcome continuously. Therefore, many legal scholars want witness testimony removed from trials.
Back to the movie because Pete and his crew delivered, namely in the emotional department. This is not hyperbole, bring tissue. At the dramatic climax, you may well up. I did but I was guilty of this during the incinerator scene in Toy Story 3 and I think at the beginning of Up. I can’t honestly tell how much was Pete’s doing versus some of my own life; my family moved from Springfield, IL to Houston in 1982 when I was 14. Trust me, it was equally jarring and alien plus I was a huge pain in the ass. Ultimately, the story is about growing up, putting away things from childhood to make room for new memories and personality islands. Plus, being sad isn’t always detrimental.
How I longed for Pixar to get out of its rut with Princess Lite and poorly-thought-out prequels, gamble on something more original. They did it! What’s even better, they exceeded my expectations and produced what is now my favorite of their 15 features.
Alamo Extras: Some shorts from the Fifties giving kids and teens pointers on how to control their emotions, stuff MST3K would ridicule; A demonstration of how music can add emotion to a scene via a dog doing the same actions while different music styles are played; a Bufferin commercial involving a guys memory and it gets interrupted by a headache; Pixar Easter Eggs (Somara knew all of these); and a couple of Inside Out‘s influences: a 1943 Disney short called Reason & Emotion which was poorly disguised propaganda for the war effort; Cranium Command an Epcot attraction Peter Doctor was an animator on in the mid-Eighties; and the Gerald McBoing Boing cartoon from 1950.