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1001 Animations: Inside Out

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Show: Pixar Film
Episode: N/A
Year: 2015

Writer(s): Peter Docter, Meg LeFauve, Josh Cooley, Ronnie DelCarmen


It's hard to believe it's been 20 years since Toy Story hit theatres, thus launching animation into the age of CGI, isn't it? Pixar may not have had as vast a history as Disney, but in their 30-ish years, they've brought joy to billions of people with their ability to tell just about any story they wanted and have it be a truly wondrous experience:

 

1995: What if toys had feelings?

1998: What if insects had feelings?

1999: How would toys with feelings deal with loss and abandonment?

2001: What if the monsters in your closet had feelings?

2003: What if fish could think and had feelings?

2004: Can superheroes actually be relatable?

2006: What if cars had feelings?

2007: What if rats could help us deal with criticism?

2008: What if robots had feelings?

2009: Is it possible for anyone to achieve his or her wildest dreams?

2010: Could toys with feeling know of things like death and moving on?

2011: Lets have the cars with feelings be James Bond!

2012: You know Mulan? Yeah, let's make her Scottish and make her mama a bear!

2013: Do monsters go to college?

2015: What if... feelings had feelings?

 

Yeah... kind of hit a bit of a snag later on. After so many divisive sequels (and a spiritual successor), it's refreshing to see Pixar come up with something that tries to be creative. Now, "original" is a word that gets thrown around a lot at Inside Out; people claiming it’s one of the most original ideas ever, and that's what makes it super creative. "Original" and "creative" are not one in the same, nor do they equal good, not all the time anyways. I've seen various aspects of this movie in other pieces of media; for example, Osmosis Jones took us through the city-like inner workings of a human body, and Psychonauts had us interact with the physical manifestations of people's emotions in their heads. With that being said, you can always take stuff that's been done before and do it BETTER than anyone else, making something truly avant-garde and becoming a paragon of the craft. That's what Inside Out does.

 

To get the obvious pun out of the way: "this is a very emotional movie", and, jokes aside, that's right on the money! Now, the idea of having characters represent one specific emotion and being that emotion all the time sounds like a disastrous idea; I've seen so many characters whose only purpose is to be happy all the fucking time and NOTHING ELSE! It gets annoying on any end of the emotional spectrum, but thankfully, this movie has more brains than that. The emotions of Riley Andersen at first glance appear to be this much in the same vein as the 7 Dwarves, but it doesn't take long to see that they themselves each have their own complex three-dimensional personalities.

 

Riley herself is one of the best written and most realistic child characters I've ever seen in animation alongside Steven Universe. Most adults would scoff at the idea that a preteen girl has interests beyond rainbow and ponies! Those people never had kids and probably shouldn't. Riley feels very real to me, as if I could meet someone exactly like her who had similar experiences and turmoil in real life. Learning to accept new things in our lives, like moving to a new location, can be a lot more traumatic than people think. I've lived with my parents my entire life and for the most part, I've known the same home for over 20 years; as much as I'd love to get a nicer, bigger house, I don’t know if I could honestly go through with it because of all the memories I've shared here good and bad. I can feel for Riley every step of the way and understand her thought process.

 

The movie itself has 2 massive strengths to its name that make this idea work brilliantly: the first of which is how to properly mix together a fantastic story with a more domestic and down to earth story. When we cut between Riley and her emotions, you don't feel like you're missing out on anything at all, as they are experiencing the same events as she is and can feel what she feels; it's just from a different perspective. Joy and Sadness' adventure to get back to Riley’s mind’s Headquarters and fix her has just as much as importance as Riley's dilemmas because the correlate with each other.

 

The second strength, and this is what makes Inside Out so awesome, is that it properly shows how each emotion has a purpose. Yes, that's the moral of the movie and all, but it's more than that. People out there think being sad, disgusted, scared or angry are bad things. NO! Sadness, Disgust, Fear and Anger each have their good points and those allow us to function as human beings. 

 

Being sad allows us to show regret and disappointment so the pain doesn't hurt us as much, like crying over the loss of a friend. A good laugh is always welcome, but sometimes a good cry is just what people need. Disgust might seem like overreaction like how some people think broccoli is gross and all, but it's actually a defense mechanism to keep us from being poisoned, literally and socially. While I think it can be overblown to a ludicrous degree, disgust is actually a very beneficial emotion to a critic and reviewer such as myself as it helps me get my points across about why something is bad far more clearly. If you want my thoughts on fear, just look at my review of The Wizard of Oz (1990) episode "Fearless". And as for anger, you know how there are special programs to help people better control their anger and rage? They aren't as crazy as they sound; anger really is an important thing to have as hard as it is to believe. Anger's purpose is to keep things fair for you, to keep you from being taken advantage of and mingles with the other emotions to keep them in line when things go wrong. 

 

It's ok to get angry, just like it's ok to be scared, be grossed out or to even cry; these emotions make us who we are and help us grow as people. And if you're wondering, my favorite emotions are Anger and Fear. I give props to Lewis Black of all people and Bill Hader for being able to perform their roles so well. But what about Joy? Can being happy really be a bad thing? Yes, as a matter of fact, it can be bad. There's being able to stay positive and find a silver lining, and then there's putting on a fake smile while holding everything in when you know things aren't going so well, but you don't care because you don't want to worry those you love. This may be one of the few Pixar movies to lack a real villain, but Joy is still an antagonist in her own way and it's made clear she is in the wrong for pushing aside the other emotions as much as possible to keep Riley happy; especially in Sadness' case, even if it was understandable.

 

But all the same, I don't hate Joy for this because I can see where she's coming from in doing bad things. She just wants what's best for Riley, but at the same time doesn't know what she NEEDS. And besides that she doesn't seem malicious or negative at all, just a little careless and clueless. Joy and Sadness teaming up was a very smart decision not just as an opposites attract plot point, but it allows those two characters who've maintained a firm distance from each other to better understand each other's positives and what makes them tick. Sadness may seem like a downer, but she might be the smartest of the emotions as she's learned Riley quite literally "inside out" on her downtime away from the controls as it were. And Joy has a relentless determination and dedication that helps me forgive her actions of pushing Sadness out of the way.

 

And now we get to the character nobody saw coming, even in the trailers: Bing Bong! This guy right here's my favorite character in the whole movie! I won't call him the funniest comic relief ever, he's certainly not Aladdin's Genie! Really, Bing Bong has more in common with Ray the firefly from The Princess and the Frog. I bring him up because they're both actually handled in a similar way in both movies: on the outside they both appear to be your typical stupid happy-go-lucky comic relief like Koosalagoopagoop from Dexter’s Laboratory, but deep down they actually have very strong personalities and feel the full spectrum of emotions; having their own hopes and dreams that while sounding stupid to some, are very admirable in their own right.

 

It helps that Bing Bong only ever screws up one single thing in the entirety of the movie and it wasn't really his fault. Plus, it lead to the most technically impressive scene I've ever seen Pixar accomplish; I didn't even think those kinds of 2D effects were POSSIBLE in a CG film (I know about 2D credits, but to transition from 3D to 2D within the film is still really cool)! Bing Bong feels like he'd be very at home among the Looney Tunes characters; in fact, a lot of the humor in this movie seem to take cues from them, and it's actually pretty funny. And he actually succeeds in keeping Riley's core memories safe the entire time; he only loses them at first because of an outside circumstance he couldn't have helped.

 

You know how Disney often pulls this card where it seems like a good guy dies, but then they pull back the shades and say: "Look, Chief/Basil/Baloo/whoever isn't really dead, we just played you!" I don't hate the 'Disney Death' trope; in fact, it actually can genuinely work for drama when done properly. But it's funny how often Disney abuses this trope when their most famous movies Bambi and The Lion King completely avert this! The thing about death is, it's not a temporary thing. We don't have magical Dragon Balls or whatever to bring the dead back to life. In fact, because Bambi and The Lion King exist as the perfect exceptions to the rule, there's no excuse for this trope to be abused so often. 

 

This brings back the Ray parallel to Bing Bong again. In The Princess and the Frog, Ray was brutally killed and they even held a funeral for him to hammer in the point that he ain't coming back! Here, we see Bing Bong fade out of existence; he’s completely aware he's going to die/be forgotten about forever and sacrificed himself so Joy can make it back to Headquarters. Imagine if it turns out Bambi's mom or Mufasa had lived despite their endeavors, it would've completely ruined the story for Bambi and Simba, and their respective morals wouldn't have had any impact. Bing Bong dying makes the moral about life changes and growing up so much stronger! They didn't bring him be back because it would be a happy ending! They actually did away with that cliché!

 

The movie itself actually had more research than you could imagine put into it. Two of the creative consultants that worked on this beauty were actual child psychologists, one of which was Paul Ekman, who was highly renowned for his identification of the 6 universal basic emotions. It also knows the clear distinctions between being sad and being depressed. Depression is not a state of perpetual sadness and crying, it is a state of not being able to feel ANYTHING! This movie is essentially the animated equivalent of To the Moon, the way it talks about emotions and the key moments of one girl's life in such a way that we actually care deeply about them on a realistic level. 

 

Pixar works best when it tells a simple yet relatable story. If Buzz and Woody fail in Toy Story, it means Andy loses his favorite toys; if Remy fails in Ratatouille, it means Linguini doesn't get his restaurant; if Marlon can't find Nemo in Finding Nemo, he loses his only son. Even in the higher stakes, stories like WALL-E at least know how to keep the tension just high enough for us to care about what's going to happen no matter how high the stakes because they have the right balance.

 

With all of this said, I have no problems declaring this my favorite Pixar movie ever. No, even more than that this might very well be my favorite animated movie! The way it presents itself, it could easily be a film used in an actual teaching environment, like for social studies or occupational therapy. I truly believe that anybody can learn better emotional control or a start to it from this movie, learn to better appreciate and gain a better understanding of their emotional centers. In this case, this movie actually helped me gain a better control of my emotions like sadness and disgust, to better utilize them to do what I do best: make reviews like this! I've always had trouble expressing my emotions properly and if yah know why, then yah know why. But this movie actually helped me grow as a person while I'm in my 20s! I want see you all go to the moon for me, to reach great heights, and I hope Pixar continues to do the same to infinity AND BEYOND!

 

"This is why I do what I do. It's truly admirable what animation can do. It can touch our emotions in many ways, inspire us to new heights, give us direction, and give us purpose."

- Jonathan "Mysterious Mr. Enter" Rozanski


youtu.be/nP-AAlZlCkM


Inside Out is owned by Disney and Pixar.

1001 Animations is from :iconmrenter:

Regulas314
Image size
2407x1340px 414.26 KB
Make
Apple
Model
iPad
Shutter Speed
1/40 second
Aperture
F/2.4
Focal Length
4 mm
ISO Speed
64
Date Taken
Feb 28, 2016 10:51:17 PM -05:00
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NathanFilms's avatar

Joy: Come on, group hug! You, too, Anger! (pulls Anger towards her)

Anger: Don't touch me.