By Marshall Cearfoss
Staff Writer
The film, Inside Out, that shows you emotion, both in the film and in the audience.
I am going to preface with the fact that I grew up on Pixar, and frankly, the past few movies have been a disgrace to that jumpy little lamp in the opening credits. (I’m looking at you, Cars 2 and Planes.)
All I can say is that it’s such a relief to see Disney and Pixar going back to their good old days of genuine creativity.
So, the premise of this film is that you’re watching the humanized, physical representations of the emotions of Riley.
Riley (played by Kaitlyn Dias) is a generally happy 11-year-old who is going through the typical tween phases.
But the true stars of the movie are her emotions. Inside of her head are the feelings of Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Fear (Bill Hader), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), and their jubilant leader, Joy (Amy Poehler).
Everything seemed to be going perfectly, resulting in many memories being joyful.
Each memory was symbolized as a glass-like orb of light. If the memory was mostly joyful, it would shine as bright yellow. If it was sad it is blue, angry memories are red, disgusting ones are green and fearful one tinted… kind of a bland shade of purple-ish.
Anyway, everything was alright UNTIL dun dun dun, due to Riley’s father’s business, they had to move from Minnesota to sunny California. But not just California… San Francisco, California.
Moving from pretty much anywhere (including most third world countries) to Frisco can cause all of our little Amy Poehlers inside our heads to keel over.
The producers summed up the emotional processes of a pre-teen quite well. I am familiar with this situation, as my family also had a big move when I was about Riley’s age. Disney/Pixar obviously put an ocean of effort into deciphering the mental developments of the adolescent mind.
But I digress… So, that’s about as far as a spoilerless summary can go.
Now, onto my opinion! As I stated above, I feel like most of the recent Disney animations have been either so-so or just bad. Horrible, to be exact.
Thankfully, this film has proven that Disney/Pixar has rejuvenated itself back to the same creativity and originality that it once had long ago.
When I was watching this movie, moments here and there would keep throwing me back to the days of Monsters Inc., Toy Story, and A Bug’s Life, and I believe it did the same for most of the other moviegoers in the theater.
One poor girl was in tears before the end of the film. The movie didn’t quite bring me to tears, but the feels were definitely there.
As always, it had some jokes that were cheesy and better off if not even said, but then I kept having to remind myself that it was a kids movie, not a college-age movie. With that said, it still had humor and moments that connected to those of us who are of older maturity. One scene had me laughing enough to even distract my 4-year-old nephew from the film.
In summary, it was a very, very well made movie. It made me think. If a movie makes me think, it automatically has a higher spot on my list.
There was some cheesy humor that we could have done without, but aside from that it was just as entertaining as the classic Pixar/Disney duo films from the turn of the century.
On a scale of Michael Bay to Christopher Nolan, it was a solid Zack Snyder.
I’d like to thank Times Square Cinema for making this review possible.
