★ ★ ★ ★ ★
When it was announced that Pixar (creator of undeniably some
of the finest animated films ever made) was working on a film primarily
concerned with human emotions, there really shouldn’t have been any surprise.
After all, their entire back catalogue has dealt with emotions; what if toys
could feel sadness, what if cars really did experience the joy of racing, what
if monsters felt fear? With Inside Out,
Pixar have gone meta on us and asked the big question: what if feelings had feelings?
The story of the film focuses on the headspace of Riley, an
11 year-old girl having to deal with moving to a new home, attempting to make
new friends and accepting an imposing new environment. Her emotions and
thoughts are translated into actions by way of five characters living inside
her mind: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger. Joy has primarily been in the
driving seat, guiding the other emotions up until the big move occurs, when
both she and Sadness are stranded in the depths of Riley’s mind, leaving the
others in charge…with disastrous results. Thus begins an epic journey as Joy
and Sadness are forced to work together in an effort to save Riley before her
negative emotions destroy the meaningful parts of her mind.
Perhaps more than the massive visual worlds they forge for
each film, Pixar are constantly meritorious when it comes to creating instantly
memorable and well-cast characters, and Inside
Out is no exception: each of the individual emotions are wonderfully
brought to life: Amy Poehler is infectiously boisterous as Joy, Mindy Kaling is
given free rein to do her thing as Disgust, and her Office co-star Phyllis Smith is expertly chosen to give voice to
Sadness. Not only are these characters – plus the myriad of strange beings that
pop up across Riley’s mindscape – memorable, but so relatable to the
expressions of real-life emotions that viewers both young and old will be searching for signs of them in everyone they know.
Now, back to that wonderful world-building! Riley’s brain is
Pixar’s most ambitious and abstract creation yet, where complicated ideas and
complex concepts are given glorious physical form but never over-simplified for
the sake of dumbing-down; it’s just taken for granted that children will
recognise enough of their own experience to connect the dots. No depths of imagination
are left unplumbed, be it the subconscious, the ‘Train of Thought’, or the vast
chasms where forgotten memories lie.
And of course, all of this is realised in extraordinary
accomplished animation, in which gorgeous primary colours threaten to pop right
out of the screen and there is never a moment where visual quality is exchanged
in favour of narrative focus or vice-versa. In addition, it’s encouraging to
see that whatever developments have been made in the area of animation, the
approach to humans in this film is consistent as it’s ever been, by which I
mean they are recognisably human but not overtly so: you’ll find no uncanny
valley, DreamWorks rubbish here!
The same level of attention is also paid to the narrative,
finding relatable content yet also dressing it up in an appealing way. So while
Inside Out deals intelligently (but
not always delicately, and usually for the better) with difficult and fresh subject
matter, it’s delivered in a familiar box. There are call-backs throughout the
plot to the best of Pixar’s back catalogue: the opening is a mirror image to
the first 15 minutes of Up, Joy and
Sadness sneaking past a terrifying element of Riley’s subconscious recalls Buzz
and Woody treading over Scud in Toy Story,
and the factory-esque make-up of the halls of memory is the scare-floor from Monsters Inc. on a microscopic scale.
It’s been a long time since we’ve been gifted true Pixar at
its most masterful (I think we can all agree that Cars 2 didn’t give the studio their finest showcase), and the time
and effort spent creating a whole new world is clear for all to see. This is
animation at its most beautiful, and children’s entertainment at its bravest.
