Bing-bong and welcome to another of my film reviews. This is especially late review since I decided to review Castle in the Sky at the GFT first but I felt obligated to write this review; it’s my first one on a Pixar pic so I’m not going to miss this opportunity! So without further delay, please enjoy the review and beware of spoilers!
The emotional INSIDE OUT! Come on; had to use that pun at some point! This film is about a young girl called Riley who has lived a happy life until she moves with her parents to a new home in San Francisco. Her emotions find it hard adapting to a new home, city and school, especially the emotions Joy and Sadness don’t see eye to eye; mainly because Joy wants Riley to be happy and tries to keep Sadness away. This doesn’t result well as Riley’s core memories (that define her personality) are lost along with both Joy and Sadness, leaving Fear, Disgust and Anger by themselves in HQ. So Joy and Sadness need to return the core memories to HQ in order to bring ‘balance’ to Riley’s life. And the moral is…a major spoiler so I’m going to wait a wee while until I reveal it!
My family and I went to the Saltcoats Premier Cinema again, but this time made sure to be there 10 minutes earlier since adverts and trailers are before the show time. We got relatively good seats (centre and to the left), the picture was fine and sound was good. There wasn’t a Pics Prick this time surprisingly; usually in the past with family films or with the Premier Cinema you either have wains greeting or idiots being idiotic, but this time it was actually peaceful with the fellow audience members and a good showing!
Before I review Inside Out, it would be a sin not to mention its corresponding short! Short films have shown before most of the Pixar films and with Inside Out it was LAVA; a story about a volcano that sings and longs to love that special…volcano. I know it sounds strange…and it was strange. I saw a teaser trailer for this short and was cringing at the tune, and the short itself wasn’t much different; it was just overly cheesy and didn’t feel like a Pixar short to me. I was just trying to understand it even metaphorically but was too weird and I feel it would have been better if it was similar to Blue Umbrella where we’re not told (word for word) what the character is thinking or feeling. The graphics were amazing though (as per usual) and there was a moment of disbelief when we thought the male volcano had failed; firstly because the female volcano couldn’t see him and then he dies/drowns/loses hope/loses the will to live…still trying to figure out what happened! It was quite depressing anyway but in the end the male volcano emerged (somehow) and they lived happily ever after. At any rate ‘Lava’ isn’t at the top of my list with the Pixar Shorts; The Blue Umbrella alongside Geri’s Game are still my favourites.
With the first teaser for Inside Out I wasn’t too sure about this film; it just felt like something we’d seen before in primary school and an idea that would be more suited for a short film. But when the official trailer released and we got more insight of the story and Riley, I started to get really excited for it. I was assuming that in the end Sadness would be acknowledged more, but wasn’t sure how Pixar were going to go about it; you don’t want kids going suicidal! But they managed it by getting the emotions to merge their influences on memories, especially core memories, and concluding with the moral: it’s good to be sad sometimes which is great thing for kids to learn when growing up. Poor Sadness though; I thought I’d dislike Joy because of her overbearing personality or she’d become annoying with her optimistic well being, but I actually disliked her for neglecting Sadness and even betraying her at one point as well. She was constantly sighing when having to deal with Sadness and I was wondering if Joy was going to have a meltdown with Sadness; she didn’t do that but she did shed a few tears at the thought of losing Riley forever. Joy was sad…so, wait; do emotions have emotions? Going slightly Inception-y here! Talking about sad, what about Bing Bong’s sacrifice? It made sense to have an ‘imaginary friend’ in this film but even although he was really weird, sacrificing himself and fading away so no one would remember him was pretty sad.
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Pixar is known for really sad parts in its films (Nemo’s mum and siblings dying and Carl’s wife dying right at the beginning of their films), but there are also fun, chirpy and humorous moments as well. It was hilarious when Fear is watching the dream like a horror film and predicting the cliché moments, or the chewing gum earworm reappearing throughout the film. And where would Pixar be without it’s good luck charm, John Ratzenberger; his part was great at the end of Inside Out, but in the first few Pixar films John had much bigger roles (Ham, Pete Flea, even a character called John). His duration in these films seem to be decreasing and with the recent ones we only get about 10 seconds of him; its becoming as short as the Stan Lee cameos now. The biggest highlight of this film was the imagination and creativity behind it! All the Pixar films have unique storylines that no one else has used but it was an absolute pleasure seeing how the different ideas for this ‘world’ join together. Like how any emotion can be linked in with the five characterised emotions, the personality islands defining Riley, ‘dream productions’, earworms, long-term memory and how it all evolves when Riley changes. But I have to say even although I loved that appeal, I can’t imagine children will understand most of the features or puns like the abstract-thought room, and the teenage angsts/transformations gags that only parents/adults would understand. I liked it so who cares about what kids think; literally or emotionally!
This is the kind of film I look forward to buying when it releases on blu-ray, but even more so when I found out about the additional short film, “Riley’s First Date”; quite self explanatory. In the main film I thought it was a brilliant addition to see what emotions are like with other people apart from Riley especially during the credits; it showed there is still so much potential with the Inside Out concept (perhaps a sequel when Riley’s older). But this extra short film looks brilliant and hilarious, as it seems to be more about the parents and boyfriend and their emotions and reactions.
After Monster’s University, Pixar decided to have a gap year to work on Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur for 2015; two original Pixar films which aren’t sequels or prequels! Once The Good Dinosaur (which I’m not too sure about again) is released later this year, we’re going to be receiving many sequels of Pixar films; some sound good, some bad! Finding Dory where Dory tries to metaphorically ‘find’ herself and remember who she really is. The Incredibles sequel by Brad Bird again which has got to be good! Cars 3 – honestly I don’t know why this is happening since Cars was ok and Cars 2 is probably the lowest when ranking Pixar films! Toy Story 4 which will be directed by John Lasseter again (who did 1 & 2); I have mixed feeling about this film because it was a good conclusion Andy passing the toys onto another kid, and I wonder how a romantic comedy between Woody and Boo-Peep will be a better film. And finally, Pixar announced another original film called “Coco”; not much has been said apart from it being based on the Mexican Day of the Dead, and will feature a boy named Miguel being united with long-dead family. Sounds intriguing but I’m scared it could be quite similar to “The Book of Life” film which came out last year. All 6 future films sound ok but I’m most looking forward to the Incredibles sequel!
Ok, just to sum up: initially I wasn’t particularly bothered by the Inside Out trailer, but the film bet my expectations and proved to be one of the top Pixar films so far in my opinion. Almost a little bit like Up, this animation is aimed at a more adult audience, but is still able to be enjoyed by children. As for the Premier Cinema, it was fine as usual; good seats, good screen and ok sound. Again sorry for the tardiness of this review, but hope you enjoyed! Be sure to look out for my review of “The Good Dinosaur” and I’ll probably do a ranking of the Pixar feature animations like the MCU films ranking once my review on The Good Dinosaur is done! Well that’s it; we’ve come to the end of another review. See you later!
SALTCOATS PREMIER CINEMA – 7/10
INSIDE OUT – 8/10
LAVA – 5/10
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