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Why Inside Out is an all-round Joy
Inside Out head-spins, Ant-Man punches above its weight and the final Hobbit gets even longer. Plus we’re on set of your new obsession, Jessica Jones, and bowing down to the genius of Ennio Morricone.
INSIDE OUT
Out 23 November DVD, BD, 3D BD
Who better than Pixar to tell us what’s going on inside our own heads? The company has been doing it, on and off, since 1995 – making us fall in love with pull-string cowboys, pine for lost clownfish and bawl our eyes out at cranky old men in flying houses. Not that Pixar is always right. With an impossible string of hits spanning 20 years, its recent run saw the studio’s crown start to slip – loosened even more by an upcoming slate stuffed with sequels. But before Pixar starts opening up its old worlds, director Pete Docter narrows down a new one to craft the studio’s smallest, subtlest, most mature film to date.
Essentially the story of an 11-year-old having her first mental breakdown, Pixar’s approach to metaphysics is absurdly grown-up on paper. With no rollercoaster set-pieces, no cute sidekicks and no major characters who aren’t all versions of the same person, it’s not much more kiddie-friendly on screen. But that’s not to say Inside Out doesn’t work as a family film. Visually astounding, hilariously written and perfectly pitched to every seat in the house, it’s Charlie And The Chocolate Factory meets Charlie Kaufman – high-concepts from a child’s-eye view; emotional gut-punches wrapped in candyfloss; a sensory theme park.
Formerly of Monsters, Inc. and Up, Docter arguably has the best track-record at Pixar. Leading the disc’s deep-reaching commentary (and making a few live phone calls to various members of the cast and crew as he goes), the director tells us the idea took shape when he heard his own bubbly 11-year-old labelled “a quiet kid” by her teachers.
It’s all in the mind
Already responsible for replacing Bambi’s dead mum as the new go-to test for cold-heartedness, Docter’s own opening montage of Up is an impossible act to follow. Trying anyway, Inside Out begins with nothing less than the birth of human consciousness – introducing us to Riley and her newborn Emotion, Joy, in their first formative moments. Skipping through the next 11 years, the inside of Riley’s head becomes a fairground of imagination, a repository of memories and a fully furnished flight-deck for her five guiding Emotions to bicker over the controls.
The basics (which aren’t basic at all) are elegantly explained – Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger
and Disgust appealing to kids in primary colours and basic shapes, handling the machinery of Riley’s mind via a set of glowing marbles. Somehow it all makes sense just in time for everything to start going wrong – Riley thrown into free-fall when her mum and dad move her across country to a new home, sending Joy and Sadness on a psychological rescue mission through her crumbling synapses.
Leave the kids in front of the TV whilst you make the tea and you’ll come back to characters sobbing aboard a Train Of Thought, teetering over disappearing Islands Of Imagination or talking about “non-objective fragmentation” in an abstract 2D ether. Giant, nightmarish clowns trap heroes in cages made of balloons, dreams are rendered in working TV studios and Riley suffers a painfully real anxiety attack in the middle of her new classroom. And then there’s the subtext – suggesting that what we lose in childhood never actually comes back. Bold, big ideas for an art-house film, it’s borderline revolutionary for Pixar – which somehow manages to keep the kids (and Disney) happy with some of its sweetest, most imaginative storytelling to date.
Mixed feelings
Leading the parade is Joy, constantly lifting the spirit of the film as Riley’s cheerleading Jiminy Cricket, giddily voiced by Amy Poehler and drawn like a burst of sunshine. The other Emotions are equally well scouted from sitcoms and standup; Phyllis Smith’s mopey blue blob, Bill Hader’s nervy purple stick, Mindy Kaling’s prissy green triangle; and Lewis Black’s hot-headed red briquette. Equal star is Richard Kind’s polka-dotted nougat-filled elephant-headed imaginary friend Bing-Bong, who serves as Tin Man, Lion and Scarecrow on the Yellow Brick Road to Riley’s recovery – and who provides Docter with yet another lump-in-the-throat moment that people will probably never forgive him for.
Not that the film isn’t full of them. Without any action set-pieces to add punctuation, it’s the emotional highs and lows that power the movie from scene to scene – understated enough to foreground minimal, sophisticated animation over exaggeration and bombast, light and bright enough for the kids not to notice. Scaled back not just in its micro-interiors but in the focus of its design, Inside Out represents a small step for Pixar and a giant leap for animated filmmaking as a whole.
“In the end,” says Docter, as the credits roll, “I’m proud of the statement this movie makes. In a world where we try to avoid sadness, where we medicate it, this movie reminds us how important sadness is – reminds us of the richness, warmth and complexity that it brings.”
Damn it, Docter. There’s something in our eye again…
Extras › Commentary › Shorts