Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

Discussions of specific films and franchises.
Post Reply
Message
Author
User avatar
hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#1 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Jun 20, 2015 2:15 pm

Anyone see this? I didn't even realize it was out this weekend, and apparently it's being hailed as Pixar's return to form (when they took chances with Wall-E and Docter's Up, arguably their two finest works).

User avatar
Newsnayr
Joined: Wed Apr 01, 2015 12:54 am

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#2 Post by Newsnayr » Sat Jun 20, 2015 2:20 pm

I saw it yesterday, and it certainly is Pixar's return to form. Compelling concept, excellent directing and nearly flawless execution, and I think it certainly is safely among the second tier (middle 5) of Pixar's 15 films so far, alongside Monster's Inc. and The Incredibles.

User avatar
hearthesilence
Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
Location: NYC

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#3 Post by hearthesilence » Sat Jun 20, 2015 2:31 pm

Will definitely see it - I think the last Pixar film I saw was Toy Story 3 which I did like quite a bit and seemed to at least build on Up, thematically speaking.

User avatar
tenia
Ask Me About My Bassoon
Joined: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:13 am

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#4 Post by tenia » Sat Jun 20, 2015 4:03 pm

Once you understand it's not fun at all but rather melancholy explained to the 10 years old, it was quite moving and actually spot on numerous things.
This being written, the script and situations are pretty much on auto pilot, with many developments being obvious.

User avatar
DarkImbecile
Ask me about my visible cat breasts
Joined: Mon Dec 09, 2013 6:24 pm
Location: Albuquerque, NM

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#5 Post by DarkImbecile » Sat Jun 20, 2015 11:23 pm

Newsnayr wrote:I saw it yesterday, and it certainly is Pixar's return to form. Compelling concept, excellent directing and nearly flawless execution, and I think it certainly is safely among the second tier (middle 5) of Pixar's 15 films so far, alongside Monster's Inc. and The Incredibles.
I'd go farther than that and say it's easily their best since Wall-E and among their top releases ever, though I acknowledge I might be biased: as the father of a rambunctious, imaginative daughter with a gender-neutral name starting with 'R', some of the more emotional moments hit pretty close to home. Still, unreservedly recommended for any fans of quality Pixar.

hollis
Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2014 2:13 pm

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#6 Post by hollis » Sun Jun 21, 2015 12:11 am

DarkImbecile wrote:daughter with a gender-neutral name starting with 'R'
I'd go a bit further, as I've noticed some reviews have also picked up on: I think it's subtly suggested that Riley is gender-fluid (or whatever the accepted term is--not trying to be insensitive, I'm honestly not sure).

Every other mind we enter is single gender--her mother, father, the boy with the water bottle--but Riley's is populated by emotions of both genders. Maybe it's the film's way of showing how gender roles aren't quite solidified among pre-pubescent children. The film doesn't definitively say one way or another, and it doesn't need to, but it's worth noting.

I adored it overall. The plot itself wasn't all that unusual or surprising, but it's a film bursting with the qualities that made Pixar so beloved: quirky, silly humor and sincere, heartfelt emotions. And I haven't seen an animated film as outright clever as this one in forever. The scene where they cut through her abstract thinking was a personal favorite. When was the last time a mainstream animated film had a scene so unabashedly brainy and weird?

Will it have appeal outside Pixar's already broad fan-base? Maybe not, but those already sold are in for a treat.

User avatar
djproject
Joined: Sat Oct 09, 2010 3:41 pm
Location: Framingham, MA
Contact:

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#7 Post by djproject » Sun Jun 21, 2015 10:07 pm

From what I understand, the premise can be partially inspired/explained by this: http://www.selfleadership.org/about-int ... stems.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

User avatar
lacritfan
Life is one big kevyip
Joined: Wed Dec 05, 2007 6:39 pm
Location: Los Angeles

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#8 Post by lacritfan » Mon Jun 22, 2015 7:15 pm

I easily put this in my Top Five Pixar movies. The last artist who captured an imaginary inner workings of a child as good as this was Bill Watterson with Calvin and Hobbes. Kudos to Pixar for the outside-the-box voice casting of Phyllis Smith (The Office) as Sadness and Lewis Black as Anger, very much like their casting of Sarah Vowell as Violet in The Incredibles.

User avatar
Svevan
Joined: Mon Nov 22, 2004 7:49 pm
Location: Portland, OR

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#9 Post by Svevan » Sat Jun 27, 2015 3:59 pm

Some mild spoilers!

My appreciation for this film has grown a lot since I first saw it. Although it is certainly an imaginative (and according to some almost-killjoy PhD students, inaccurate) representation of the mind, I've found myself coming back to its emotion-dominant control center and its memory bank as simple but wise analogies that I can use when dealing with my nephew, or with myself. These images of what goes on in the human brain are easily digestible for kids, but honestly I found myself learning a lot about myself as I watched Sadness slip into control while the other emotions were squabbling, or when Joy and Sadness leave the control center altogether, or when the Islands of Personality begin to crumble. That part in particular, as Hockey Island and Friendship Island deteriorate, seemingly with no possible return, struck me as really scary for a child to watch and comprehend, but what I wouldn't give to have seen that depiction of personality when I was a child. That the Islands of Personality change throughout the lifetime of a person is the kind of insight I wouldn't expect a kid's film to get, let alone strive to communicate to its audience. And although the journey of Joy and Sadness through Riley's conscious and subconscious mind follows some Pixar and adventure film tropes, the journey of Riley back to her parents is not a simple and easy "everyone lived happy ever after" ending. Her emotions have been challenged, and she's gained complexity and nuance (evidenced in the end by her memories becoming multi-colored. It reminds me of showing Spirited Away to my nephew when he was 6 - he asked me whether the ending was sad or happy, and I told him it was probably both. He had to think about that one for a while). Overall I'm just really grateful that filmmakers out there wanted to distill their care for the human mind and their basic research into the human personality into these digestible images so that kids and adults can both use these analogies to better understand themselves. It's a sad and joyful film that reflects our culture's preoccupation with mental health, and it does so at a pretty quick pace and with no qualms about being abstract, scary, and mysterious. Bravo to Pixar for being brave enough to show how life isn't always perfect, and the mind is constantly changing.

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#10 Post by domino harvey » Fri Nov 06, 2015 11:14 am

This was wonderful, easily my favorite Pixar film (not that I'm all that huge a fan to begin with...) and the best animated film I've first seen as an adult. I admired the constant novelty and forward momentum, the way it tried to explain rather complicated ideas about emotional and cognitive development and the pains of growing up with a rather dark and honest look at how happiness is often inextricably tied with sadness in our lives. Surprisingly emotional stuff, but also frequently laugh out loud hilarious (and there's a rather droll sense of humor running through the minor supporting parts that helps balance some of the flashier style of the main emotions) to help give a rounded experience.

User avatar
Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
Location: NYC

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#11 Post by Roscoe » Fri Nov 06, 2015 2:52 pm

I found INSIDE OUT to be an oddly unimaginative and unengaging film from Pixar, bland snivelling emo-wanking banal pap. Borrowing a notion used to wittier effect in Woody Allen's EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX, Pixar shows us a control console managed by anthropomorphized emotions Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger and Fear who struggle to keep the little girl on an even keel during some frankly low level trauma: her family relocates from Minnesota to San Francisco and she's kind of bummed about it. There's the occasional bit of Pixar magic, no doubt (side-trips into other heads are funny and revealing), but all too often it settle for easy on the nose characters and situations (the little red Anger character gets a Hot Head, I mean really, and there's an actual Train Of Thought, with wheels and an engine) and dated unfunny jokes: a slice of vegetarian pizza is blamed on San Francisco in a joke that might have been amusing in 1979, and a reference to bears/gay men falls really spectacularly flat. The story, most unforgivably, is just shockingly predictable -- there's never any doubt where the film is going to go and it goes exactly and only there. If only those Pixar standbys Surprise, Wit and Intelligence had gotten to the console in this movie's head, we might have gotten something really interesting, instead of the soggy kiddie-chick movie we're stuck with here.

And it features the most cynical overcharge for unnecessary 3D in my entire experience as a movie-goer.

User avatar
Drucker
Your Future our Drucker
Joined: Wed May 18, 2011 9:37 am

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#12 Post by Drucker » Fri Nov 06, 2015 2:57 pm

I'd have to revisit the film again to really come to terms with how much I disagree with you, Roscoe, but calling moving across country a low-level trauma for a child is ridiculous. It's one of the scariest things a child can go through, to abandon everything they've been and become "the new kid." The movie is a kid's movie, told from a kid's perspective.

User avatar
Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
Location: NYC

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#13 Post by Roscoe » Fri Nov 06, 2015 3:05 pm

Few people went through that trauma as frequently as I did when I was a kid -- 10 different cities before I turned 19, and all too often it was a new school every year, believe me I know about all that, and I was surprised that the filmmakers never once made me feel anything but indifference about little Riley's little problems, all of which were just all so obviously going to pass with a couple of weeks and a decent pizza, and yeah it isn't always clear when you're living in the middle of it and all that, but that didn't make the film any more interesting to me. If her Mom and Dad had divorced, or something really drastically bad had been going down, it might have been different. Alas, poor Riley had to suffer the horror of moving to San Francisco. My heart didn't bleed for her.

And Anger's all red -- and he gets a hot head. And little Sad is blue. Jesus. And they claim that script took years to write.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqjxUufmdWA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Zot!
Joined: Wed Jan 20, 2010 12:09 am

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#14 Post by Zot! » Fri Nov 06, 2015 4:01 pm

I'm not a big fan of Pixar, but I think this is their best film, exactly because it makes a big deal out of a minor topic. I still have issues with some of the more cliche elements, and forced sentiment, but if you want childhood trauma, I think you need to stick to Pinocchio. I still have nightmares about those kids who never got off of Pleasure Island.

Arrow
Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2009 1:02 pm

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#15 Post by Arrow » Fri Nov 06, 2015 4:12 pm

I haven't seen the film so I can't speak to that, but I can speak to trauma and say that there is no singular established metric to quantify its effects. There are a lot of factors involved but everyone has a different level of sensitivity which is why we see some soldiers suffering PTSD and some not, and some abuse victims suffering dissociation and some not. I apologize for the oversimplification but I think depending on the person, especially for a child, a move could be very traumatic.

User avatar
cdnchris
Site Admin
Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 2:45 pm
Location: Washington
Contact:

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#16 Post by cdnchris » Fri Nov 06, 2015 4:27 pm

Roscoe wrote: And Anger's all red -- and he gets a hot head. And little Sad is blue. Jesus. And they claim that script took years to write.
Really? Of all the other things to randomly cherry-pick to criticize and show how lazy the movie is it's the colours of the characters. Those colours are universally recognizable (to most) for representing their respective emotions. Of course Anger is red! That's the colour most associated with anger. Would it really have been more creative to have him coloured aqua? I guess, but from a visual perspective it would make no sense. It would be stupid to do it in any other colour. I put this on par with the same people that bitch about the ending of Minority Report: sure, I guess it could have ended with him being suspended, but what point would that serve to the film other than to have a depressing ending? Nothing. It would just be some bullshit plot point to be different for the sake of being different.
Alas, poor Riley had to suffer the horror of moving to San Francisco. My heart didn't bleed for her.
Though I just had to have a talk with my daughter last night to put some things in perspective for her, I find this very shallow and cold. I understand you moved around a lot, so you would be used to it. But a child rooted in one area for a long time (even 5 years would seem like a lifetime) would be traumatized if they moved away and left everything they know (places, friends, etc.), especially when it's all they know. To belittle that and say the kid should just shake it off because it didn't bother "you" is bullshit, really.

User avatar
ianthemovie
Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2009 10:51 am
Location: Boston, MA
Contact:

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#17 Post by ianthemovie » Fri Nov 06, 2015 4:42 pm

As Drucker said, it's a kid's movie--or, more accurately, an all-ages movie. Some of the humor and character design (like the color coding) is inevitably going to be pitched at young children and is going to feel on-the-nose to adults. I imagine gags like the Train of Thought will appeal to slightly older kids who are able to grasp language-based humor and puns. (Same with all of the busy running-around in the middle of the movie: this seemed designed to appeal to very young kids whose attention would probably not be held if all of the characters just sat around the control booth for the whole movie.)

In other words, I think it helps to contextualize a lot of the choices here. I loved the film and got a lot out of it from an adult perspective, but not every moment is designed with an adult audience member in mind.

EDIT: Also, the movie's main idea (that we can experience more than one emotion at the same time) may seem obvious to adults, but seems quite complex and intelligent for a kid's movie to deal with. It's handled in a way that's really lovely and moving as opposed to having some character verbalize this in a really clunky or didactic way. It's done in such a way that kids are likely to get the idea AND adult viewers will be able to appreciate how well it's been dramatized--which is what Pixar, at its best, has always been able to do.

User avatar
Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
Location: NYC

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#18 Post by Roscoe » Fri Nov 06, 2015 5:20 pm

I didn't see the loveliness. I just saw clunky and diactic. Opinions, they differ all over the place.

"Though I just had to have a talk with my daughter last night to put some things in perspective for her, I find this very shallow and cold. I understand you moved around a lot, so you would be used to it. But a child rooted in one area for a long time (even 5 years would seem like a lifetime) would be traumatized if they moved away and left everything they know (places, friends, etc.), especially when it's all they know. To belittle that and say the kid should just shake it off because it didn't bother "you" is bullshit, really."

Well, to belittle someone else's opinion as being bullshit is, well, bullshit, too. And from a site admin, yet.

To be clear -- I never belittled the experience of moving to a new place when a child, nor did I say she should just shake it off. Speaking from experience, I can say that that can't be shaken off, it can only be endured. And yeah, as someone who went through it a lot, I can also say that as bad as it was, I got through it, and all through the film I was aware that so would little Riley, considering her near perfect parents and upscale living arrangements in San Francisco (try moving to Missoula, Montana, little Riley, rather than San Francisco -- you'd really have something to be fucking depressed about). Once again, what I mean to belittle is what I see as being INSIDE OUT's trite and cliched handling of the experience as a way of delivering some admittedly important but not exactly earthshatteringly novel emotional ideas -- that sometimes it's good to be sad and all that.

There are certainly films that make me relive all those little horrors of childhood: the terrible days when it felt like the world was going to come to an end, the first day in new school surrounded by strangers, the terror of gym class, psycho teachers, all of it, and I'm sorry but Pixar's INSIDE OUT isn't one of them. It is simply too cliched and too obvious in its methods and manner (red Anger, blue Sadness, literal Train of Thought) to make me do anything but shrug off little Riley's little problems as being the kind of thing that'll resolve themselves after a few weeks, it never got me inside that girl's head enough to share her experience in an interesting way.

I was kind of curious as to why all the little guys in the Father's head all seemed to be Anger, and all the little ladies in the Mother's head were all Sadness -- that might have been interesting to explore. Maybe in a sequel with a somewhat broader and hopefully more interesting screenplay. Again, maybe the film would have had more of an impact for me if the stakes had been a bit higher -- if it wasn't something that was going to eventually resolve itself with new friends and basic settling in to the new home.

User avatar
Michael Kerpan
Spelling Bee Champeen
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:20 pm
Location: New England
Contact:

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#19 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Nov 06, 2015 7:01 pm

I would note that Spirited Away also dealt (at its core) with a young girl's trauma over moving from one city to another.

Curiously enough, Inside Out already happened to be scheduled for viewing this very evening.

User avatar
domino harvey
Dot Com Dom
Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#20 Post by domino harvey » Fri Nov 06, 2015 8:05 pm

Riley's move is traumatic to her, as is clearly shown by how it effectively forces her to grow up in ways she hadn't been challenged to before, and in the process of doing so certain aspects of her personality die (some of which are replaced or replenished by the end of the film, but not all)-- this is an event which fundamentally changes her and alters her past memories and emotional responses. The film uses a universal event like moving to a new city because it's precisely the kind of relatable trauma that nearly everyone watching has experienced (or will soon enough). A story about poor Riley being abused or her parents breaking up is more easily understood as traumatic, but something like this is deathly serious to a young person. Roscoe, you received such strong push-back in part because your comments reflect someone who's forgotten what it feels like to be young, to experience things for the first time: vividly and wildly and melodramatically. It's what makes a great film about youth (which I believe this to be) truly great: the understanding of how everything feels so much more fill-in-the-blank when you're experiencing it for the first time. This is part of Inside Out's genius and why most viewers have responded so strongly, I suspect. For every "obvious" element derided, there are several more clever ideas and concepts at work here (and none of the things singled-out bother me at all). This is four quadrant entertainment, they're going to lob a lot of stuff over the plate, but I found all of it quite effective. YMMV, as with anything relating to personal taste.
Roscoe wrote:I was kind of curious as to why all the little guys in the Father's head all seemed to be Anger, and all the little ladies in the Mother's head were all Sadness -- that might have been interesting to explore.
There was only one Anger and one Sadness in Dad and Mom, but they like Joy in Riley are the apparent team leaders in each. I took the film's suggestion to be that as an adult, when our persona is pretty well set, one of the emotions tends to take over as team leader and they along with the rest adapt to the outward persona of the individual (and vice versa).

Not that it was ever all that convincing anyways, the gender fluidity argument floated earlier in the thread is pretty strongly refuted by the short included with the Blu-ray, Riley's First Date?, btw (in contrast with the feature, however, it's disappointing and not especially clever)

User avatar
Brian C
I hate to be That Pedantic Guy but...
Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2009 11:58 am
Location: Chicago, IL

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#21 Post by Brian C » Fri Nov 06, 2015 9:12 pm

Roscoe wrote: It is simply too cliched and too obvious in its methods and manner (red Anger, blue Sadness, literal Train of Thought) to make me do anything but shrug off little Riley's little problems as being the kind of thing that'll resolve themselves after a few weeks...
I feel like you missed the whole point of the movie. These issues don't "resolve themselves", we need to work through them and find ways to cope. The movie was a dramatization of that process. If you didn't find it effective on those terms, so be it, but you write as if the point is to wow us with how awful Riley has things.

But I think the mundanity of her situation is kind of the point. Everyone has to face their own personal crises, and we all have to find ways to get through them - waiting for things to "resolve themselves" is just not workable. But instead, you seem to have taken away the lesson that she doesn't really have it THAT bad because her parents don't beat her (or just as bad, make her move to Montana!). It's a very callous reaction and it speaks more poorly of your approach to the film than the film itself.

User avatar
Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
Location: NYC

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#22 Post by Roscoe » Fri Nov 06, 2015 9:54 pm

"I feel like you missed the whole point of the movie. These issues don't "resolve themselves", we need to work through them and find ways to cope. The movie was a dramatization of that process. If you didn't find it effective on those terms, so be it, but you write as if the point is to wow us with how awful Riley has things."

Nope, point gotten -- Riley worked through the issues, it was all dramatized right there, impossible to miss, and I was bored senseless by all of it. And yeah, I did think that part of the point was to wow us with poor Riley's sad little situation.

"But I think the mundanity of her situation is kind of the point. Everyone has to face their own personal crises, and we all have to find ways to get through them - waiting for things to "resolve themselves" is just not workable. But instead, you seem to have taken away the lesson that she doesn't really have it THAT bad because her parents don't beat her (or just as bad, make her move to Montana!). It's a very callous reaction and it speaks more poorly of your approach to the film than the film itself."

Yeah, I did take away that little Riley doesn't have it that bad, because it's painfully clear to me that she doesn't have it that bad. She's got two loving parents, food and clothes and a single family dwelling in San Francisco, and no, her parents don't beat her, and her little bad patch in adjusting to new circumstances will pass as she adjusts to some not even remotely difficult circumstances, which once again I have to say I found were dramatized with the utmost banality. Sorry. And characterizing my take as "callous" isn't really necessary, is it? I didn't go around characterizing other people's views like that. Heavens. They're just opinions, folks -- I didn't find it necessary to belittle anyone else's take on the film, just the film itself.

User avatar
swo17
Bloodthirsty Butcher
Joined: Tue Apr 15, 2008 10:25 am
Location: SLC, UT

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#23 Post by swo17 » Fri Nov 06, 2015 10:15 pm

Roscoe, while I disagree with you, I found your first post amusing and well written. But ever since then you've just been repeating yourself. Best to let this one go.

User avatar
Roscoe
Joined: Fri Nov 14, 2014 3:40 pm
Location: NYC

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#24 Post by Roscoe » Fri Nov 06, 2015 10:22 pm

I reserve the right to reply to replies. But yeah, the points have been made, and made again. Moving on.

User avatar
Michael Kerpan
Spelling Bee Champeen
Joined: Wed Nov 03, 2004 1:20 pm
Location: New England
Contact:

Re: Inside Out (Pete Docter, 2015)

#25 Post by Michael Kerpan » Fri Nov 06, 2015 11:34 pm

I (vastly) prefer Spirited Away. I found Inside Out WAY too hyperactive -- and I felt a sense of irritation and impatience beginning early on in the film. There were moments I enjoyed, but mostly I found this tedious. It did not help that I did not find any of the few human interactions portrayed particularly believable. There is obviously a big audience for Pixar stuff, but I'm obviously not destined to be part of it.

Post Reply