Inside Out

While the cinema was packed with kids I still had a blast watching Inside Out. I had lost a little bit a faith in Pixar in recent years, WALL-E and Up were fun, yet poorly paced, Brave was cluttered with no appreciation of quiet time and while I haven't seen Cars or Cars 2 I can hazard a guess that they might not be my cup of tea. Trailers for Inside Out also seemed a bit spotty, I can remember texting Mark over sneek-peeks of the film and none of us knew what to make of it.

Thankfully everything clicked after the opening moments of the film and it sets up a imaginative world and lore for the characters. Supposedly everyone is influenced by 5 key emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust and Anger. These feelings are personified as 5 cute creatures that man a control station within the psyche of an eleven year old girl that influence her actions and perceptions of the world and her memories, which in tern, make up her personality. This is all established visually within the beginning minutes perfectly.

There was clearly a really well thought out world which explains things like why we delete memories and how we deal with abstract thought. It would have been brilliant to see these concepts expanded a little more for the sake of the main story but instead they are used as quick gags and ironically forgotten. The humour is consistently on point though, while it won't split your sides, it will keep you braced with a smile thanks to excellent delivery from all of the cast, what else should you expect from some SNL members?

Above all else the quality of the animation itself felt like a real step up from anything else I'd seen before. All of the emotions had there own distinct style of moving and expressing themselves. Joy gets the most screen time and all of her actions feel energetic and contagious, extending her character from the realm of imaginary into believable. Disgust is the weakest of the 5 emotions as her inclusion felt necessary to oblige the 'kids hate broccoli' jokes, which are fine, but they never amount to anything meaningful. Facial expressions are highly comical and during sadder moments they can be down-right heart-breaking, especially when mixed with subtle body language which hit hard and make you really appreciate just how far Pixar animators are willing to go for their films.

While it doesn't quite hit the highs of Monsters Inc or Finding Nemo, Pixar's latest effort is a good step back in the right direction for producing films. Pixar's CCO John Lasseter often likes to quote Walt Disney 'For every laugh, there should be a tear.' They clearly took these words to heart as they crafted this great little film.