The juggernaut studio that brought us Toy Story, Monsters Inc and WALL-E is back again with another intelligent animation – Inside Out. Jess Layt offers her take on the film.
Pixar is known for its top-shelf productions, and most films have become an instant classic.
After a year without a Pixar offering — its last being Monsters University in 2013 — the studio has delivered perhaps its most human film yet.
Inside Out follows the life of 11-year-old Riley through her five primary emotions — Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) — who govern her mind by their reactions to the things happening in her world.
Riley is uprooted from her comfortable, happy life in Minnesota to the hustle and bustle of San Francisco where she has no friends and is feeling disconnected from her parents.
Her emotions are encountering situations they’ve never faced before and Sadness and Fear take the reins more and more.
The world the emotions live in is much like a control station, with a giant monitor seeing through Riley’s eyes, a control panel and endless archives of memories, stored in cloudy orbs.
The disruption of Riley’s move causes turbulence in the emotions’ station, and an accident sees Joy and Sadness separated from the others and dropped into Long-Term Memories — a collection of rows and rows of memory orbs.
Here is where a true dichotomy of story is evident – there’s the colourful adventure to get Joy and Sadness back to headquarters which will appeal to the littler kids, and the emotional changes Riley goes through as all her happiness seems out of reach, which should resonate with the older kids.
And there is plenty of genuine emotion in Inside Out, which was co-directed by Peter Docter, the man behind the sob-fest that was Up.
The pure originality of the story and inventiveness of the mind space – Dream Productions, for instance, is a mini film studio in Riley’s mind where strange characters act out her dreams as she sleeps, and a literal Train of Thought can be taken from mind-station to mind-station – is a brave and fantastic move by Pixar.
It is a film that will have you easily imagining similar things exist in your own mind, chugging away to create your own unique view of the world, coloured by feelings and memories.
Like all Pixar films, it’s well-worth the watch for intelligent storytelling and real emotion.
Also worth the watch is the Pixar short film that precedes Inside Out: Lava, a charming tale of two Hawaiian volcanoes that are longing for someone to love, told through song.
One of the studio’s best shorts yet.
Inside Out is rated PG.