'Inside Out'

In cinemas July 24th!

If when watching the 'Inside Out' trailer you found yourself having trouble getting past just how surreal the concept was then I’m afraid that never really goes away, and was my main concern going into the film. It doesn’t help that the film begins with what is arguably one of the weakest Pixar shorts, a film built around a quirky song about a lonely volcano who wishes for love, the point of which seems to be little more than the opportunity to use the terrible pun “I lava you” more than enough times for it to stop being funny. Having said that, 'Inside Out' is a great film in that unique, everything you hope for from Pixar way, and quite possibly the smartest film Pixar have made yet.

Riley is an eleven year old girl living an idyllic life with her loving family in Minnesota where she plays with her friends, goofs around with her parents and excels at hockey on her local team, but she’s not really who our story is about, or … I mean … she is … but … she isn’t.

What it's really about are the emotions that live in Riley’s head, Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger. Emotions that live inside all of our heads and guide our thoughts and actions. At the centre of our story is Joy, very much the leader of the team and when we first meet the emotions they are working hard to keep Riley’s memories happy, a task they have become quite adept at despite the bumbling of their compatriot Sadness, who is clearly the outsider of the group.

This all seems very wholesome at first but it quickly becomes clear that Joy isn’t just the leader she’s more akin to a manipulative dictator, ostracising Sadness, bossing around the others and even altering Riley’s dreams to make them as cheerful as possible, even though she knows it’s against the rules. As a result the other emotions have become underdeveloped and when things don’t go so happily after Riley’s family undertake a disastrous move to San Francisco away from Riley’s friends and the life she’s built, none of the emotions seem to know how to react.

This dilemma explodes to dangerous proportions when after a disastrously sad first day at her new school Riley’s core memories fall out of alignment and Joy and Sadness are unintentionally thrown onto a perilous journey to try and make things right, leaving the inexperienced Fear, Disgust and Anger cluelessly attempting to keep Riley safe and happy.

I don’t want to go any further into spoiler territory and the above is already a little more information than the trailers have given away but I wanted to illustrate just how clever this story is truly being, because on the surface it’s probably the most colourfully kid friendly Pixar film to date, but this really is a disguise. 'Inside Out' is one of those films that just gets smarter and deeper the more I think about it, however, I’m not sure this works entirely in the films favour.

'Inside Out' is walking a very fine line and is constantly in danger of being too smart for the kids and too silly for the adults, a line Pixar have admittedly made a whole career out of treading, but this feels like their riskiest venture yet. The film is staggeringly surreal, with an extended sequence wherein our heroes foolishly enter the tunnel of abstract thought being the one moment my mind wasn’t quite ready to try and comprehend.

But at the same time the film is super cute, I mean our heroes spend no small amount of time running through the imagination of an eleven year old, though some clever nods are made towards how the mind of a girl on the edge of puberty might be beginning to change, something the emotions are also clearly unprepared for.

Despite my concerns I do think the film finds the balance between it’s high concept and it’s childish aesthetic very well, though not perfectly. You really have to buy into the idea and be able to follow the abstract concepts on display to become fully invested in the struggle of the emotions, and the ending reeks a little of plot convenience. Though when your heroes have unlimited access to the imagination of a child you can’t blame them for taking advantage.

My only other complaint is that it really feels like we’re just scratching the surface of a much larger concept, but at the same time if they made a sequel I’m not sure there’s another story that can be squeezed out of this idea. I just think that exploring the emotions of the other characters might have been nice, particularly as that’s what was teased in the trailer.

On the whole though a fantastic film, comfortably within striking distance of Pixar’s best if perhaps not quite reaching the highest ranks.

Review by Kristian Mitchell-Dolby.

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