The Blabbering Inferno: INSIDE OUT. REVIEWED.

Inside Out (2015)

Rating- U

Running Time- 1 hour 34 minutes

Directed by- Pete Docter and Ronald Del Carmen

Written by- Josh Cooley, Pete Docter, and Meg LeFauve

Pixar is a company with such a good track record that every film that they put out is immediately put under immense pressure to live up to its predecessors. So, the fact that Inside Out has received an almost unanimously positive reception is enough of a testament to the film’s quality. But, while it certainly is a good film, I personally don’t think it is of that standard of the greats that this studio has produced in the past.

Inside Out focuses on Riley (Kaitlin Dias), a young girl who is remarkably happy almost all of the time, but more predominantly the five characters who live inside her head and control her emotions; Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Fear (Bill Hader). When Riley’s family move from their idyllic Minnesotan home to a rundown little house in San Francisco coincides with Joy and Sadness getting lost inside of Riley’s head, Riley begins to act out in ways she never has before; a direct result of Anger, Disgust, and Fear being left in charge of her emotions. The majority of the film then focuses on Joy and Sadness’s journey to get back to the central control centre of Riley’s brain and return her to her usual emotionally balanced self.

The opening sets up the concept of the film very quickly but then encounters a problem because of that. It takes about ten minutes for the film to sufficiently convey how the emotions work inside people’s head but the outside world’s timeline is not ready for their story to progress for another twenty minutes or so. This results in us being beaten over the head with the, albeit interesting, concept until Riley’s character reaches a point where losing control of her emotions makes sense. But, once that point is reached, the film gains a clear objective and becomes more entertaining both inside and outside of Riley’s head.

The comedy works most of the time, despite a few jokes that don’t quite hit as they are supposed to, with most of the funniest moments coming via the emotions trying to control and react to situations happening on the outside. But, in there lies another issue with the film: the emotions react to Riley rather than the other way around. The emotions are supposed to be in control over everything that Riley feels but a lot of the time it appears that the emotions are only making decisions based on how Riley is already acting. However, they do manage to continue their impressive feat of making the comedy accessible for both children and adults; it is not so often a so-called ‘kids’ film can include a China Town (1974) reference.

So overall, Inside Out is a good film but is only par for a Pixar production. It is not a Toy Story (1995) or a WALL-E (2008) but it is not a Cars 2 (2011) or a Monsters University (2013) either; it’s just good, but not great.