IT’LL BLOW YOUR MIND!
Set in a young girl’s head, this tender and hilarious film is a masterpiece
This is the 15th feature made by Pixar, the Disney- owned film studio that has become synonymous with dazzlingly clever computer animation. The first of the 15 was the wonderful Toy story (which, a trifle unsettlingly for those of us whose children grew up knowing Buzz Lightyear practically as a family friend, will be 20 years old in November).
The best of the 15 was its 1999 sequel, the even more wonderful Toy story 2. But inside Out is the most ingenious of the bunch, an utterly beguiling story about the complex workings of a little girl’s mind.
Genius i s an over- used and therefore devalued word, but inside Out is what it looks like.
Or maybe Pete Docter is what it looks like. he i s the director, writer and animator also responsible for the 2001 hit Monsters, inc, and 2009’s wildly acclaimed (though in my view over-praised) Up.
inside Out is his most personal film, manifestly drawing on his own childhood i n Minnesota, where evidently he grew up awkward and introverted, mainly with his own imagination for company.
The Minnesota childhood of Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias), the 11-yearold girl at the centre of the story, is anything but lonely. she is popular, happy, carefree, the adored only child of kind, decent parents.
But then her father ( Kyle MacLachlan) takes a job in san Francisco, uprooting her from her friends and the apple-pie homeliness of the Midwest, and plunging her into a kind of mourning.
her turmoil, the inner life of Riley, is conveyed by characters vying for control of her conscious mind, here known as headquarters.
These are Joy (Amy Poehler), sadness ( Phyllis smith), Fear ( Bill hader), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and Anger (Lewis Black).
Naturally, they all look like the emotions they convey, and i hope it doesn’t say too much about me that
Inside Out (U) Verdict: Another Pixar gem Southpaw (15) Verdict: Too much punch
the two i relished most were sadness, a squat, blue-tinged female wearing an itchy-looking cable-knit jumper, and Anger, a red- f aced, beetle-browed male.
Aptly, and i’m sure deliberately, inside Out jiggles our emotions scarcely less than Riley’s. i know of one middle-aged woman who found parts of it almost unbearably moving, Pixar’s dutiful nod t o Uncle Walt Disney, who famously counselled that ‘for every laugh, there should be a tear’.
The poignancy is cranked up as sadness keeps touching Riley’s happy core memories of her former life, some of which are then sucked out of headquarters altogether.
Joy and the contrite sadness must
get t hem back, but t his leaves Fear, Disgust and Anger trying to keep Headquarters on an even keel, and Anger doesn’t help when he plants an idea in Riley’s mind to run away, back to her beloved Minnesota.
MEANWHILE, we get glimpses of t he s a me five emotions in the minds of others, such as Riley’s parents and even a passing dog.
i loved (and recognised) a confrontation at the dinner table between Riley’s small, red manifestation of Anger and her father’s (voiced by Docter).
The cleverness of all this will sail over the heads of a young audience, though they will doubtless love it anyway.
For the rest of us, there is so much in this film to enjoy and admire that it’s impossible to do it justice in a single sitting — i’ve already seen it twice and even that’s not quite enough. So it is similarly hard here to summarise a narrative that is labyrinthine in more ways than one, as Joy and Sadness get lost in the weird and wonderful chambers of Riley’s mind.
while trying to get back to Headquart er s on the Train Of Thought, t hey encounter her forgotten imaginary Friend Bing Bong (Richard Kind), an elephant made largely out of candy floss who has been supplanted by her imaginary Boyfriend, a handsome dude who keeps declaring: ‘i would Die for Riley!’
it was a masterstroke to make Riley 11 years old, rather than any younger, because by the end of her emotional journey she is 12, and we al l knows what happens next. ‘Hey guys, what’s puberty?’ says Disgust. ‘Probably not i mportant,’ replies Joy, sunnily. The sequel could be a challenge. WHETHER you love or loathe boxing, whether or not you subscribe to the idea of it as the ‘noble art’, there’s no doubt t hat it has inspired some great fi l ms, among them Raging Bull, and Rocky. Southpaw tries rather desperately to join the list, but in the sport’s parlance, doesn’t make the weight. That isn’t the fault of leading man Jake Gyllenhaal, who has gained back, with interest, the pounds he shed to play the gaunt, creepy lou Bloom in last year’s brilliant nightcrawler.
As orphanage kid turned world light heavyweight champion Billy Hope he certainly looks the part, and throughout does plenty of acting with a capital A as the anchors of Billy’s life — his wife Maureen (Rachel McAdams), daughter leila (Oona laurence), and reputation as a champ — are ripped from under him.
AFTER Maureen dies suddenly and shockingly, Bill y, who needed her brain to complement hi s brawn, g oes to pi ec e s . Maureen told him his friends would ‘scatter like roaches’ if ever his star fell, and so they do, led by his exploitative manager Jordan (50 Cent).
Billy loses his boxing licence when he headbutts a referee, and his fortune quickly follows, while his daughter is taken into care.
Soon, all that is left is the inevitable shot at redemption, facilitated by a wise old trainer ( Forest whitaker), and the possibility (clocked more by us than by Billy) of new l ove i n the svelte form of leila’s counsellor (naomie Harris).
The cast are uniformly excellent, and Gyllenhaal immerses himself in the role with his usual scary i ntensity, but di re c t or Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) tells the story with all the subtlety of a right uppercut.
The fight scenes are too brutal, a common mistake even in the best boxing films, but here implausibly so. And t he film is inadequately researched.
According to a f riend of mine, the boxing promoter Frank warren, a fighter who butted a referee would be finished. There would be no way back.
Here, the way back is what it’s all about, but the sweaty realism of Gyllenhaal’s performance is not matched by Kurt Sutter’s script, which is a shame.