The very quick review is that, as of right now,
it didn’t work for me.
Inside Out has a lot of great ideas and is a very interesting interpretation on the inner workings of the mind, but as a movie, it fell flat due to its choices of characters and stories. To start, here’s what I liked (minor spoilers ahead):
1. The overall idea that sadness is OK and something we should accept and embrace
2.The general representation of depression being a lack of emotions and mentally shutting down
3. Bing Bong’s arc and emotional climax (favorite character, by far)
4. Riley’s emotional climax
5. One-off gags (e.g. facts vs opinions, catchy songs, most of the end credits), though I do have issues with these explained below
6. A lot of the psychological research that went into the movie
What didn’t work for me was the following:
1. The story of the Emotions taking away from the actual depth of characterization - Riley has less agency as she’s controlled more by her emotions than being an actual “being” (elaborated in #3 below)
2. The Emotions themselves being fairly one-dimensional as characters, though they have a small degree of emotional range; sure, they may gain a wider spectrum as they age, as evidenced by the parents, but what is their actual growth and development journey? Joy seemed to be the same from her day of conception to when Riley’s 11/12 and borderline annoying. Shouldn’t the emotions be more simple with younger age?
3. Similarly, the rules of the world are very, very strange. Pixar made an inventive take on the inner mind, but their consistency for the world at large appears lacking, particularly as other characters’ minds are reduced to stereotypical gags - the dad daydreaming about hockey, the mom daydreaming about the man who got away, teen boys freaking out about girls (which admittedly was VERY funny), the truck driver, the dog, the cat (particularly with the animals, why don’t they have sophisticated emotions like the humans had in their heads? Pixar went for obvious jokes). While they did show an interesting take on the mind expanding with age, it still leaves much to the imagination of how people grow and develop; not to mention why some people have different genders in their head or a different balance of emotions. Also, Bing Bong clearly had emotions - what’s going on inside his head?
4. On a minor note, if the story was about growing up and leaving childhood behind, the Toy Story films did a better job of this, particularly Toy Story 3.
Possibly my biggest irk is that, while this is a semi-autobiographical tale from Pete Docter based largely on his daughter, the story did not feel like his to tell. What should have been a really poignant coming of age story for Riley was reduced to this really adult take on what’s going on in her mind - the emotions were too smart, the humor was geared more for adults (reference and intelligence-wise) and the overall concept may have been too highbrow. As well, it felt rather disingenuous for Docter to tell this really personal story about someone else, when it would have made more sense for his daughter to tell THIS story.
On the other hand, had Docter made the story more about his own journey, that of the Dad’s, as he moves his whole family and ventures into a new land and new creative endeavor, while still figuring out how to balance his family life, particularly his inability to connect to his developing daughter, that would have been much more fascinating. A story of people coming of age together and learning to emotionally connect, especially when they have no idea what’s going on in the other person’s mind feels much more befitting of this than what actually happened.
Or a movie about a person learning to CONTROL their emotions, rather than letting their emotions get the best of them would have had a better message. I’ll easily admit my thoughts are judged by my own experiences and perspective, where I consider the world to currently be too emotional (particularly the US) and emotions getting the best of us causes us to disconnect from others. While the movie’s message of it being OK to accept emotions is a commendable one, a better message for society would be to also learn how to control them as we learn to relate to and communicate with others.
Because the movie only touched on one dimension of emotions in a disconnected-from-character-depth way, it fell flat for me. It was a great first stage of what could have been a more fleshed-out story as mentioned above. As it was, this felt like a gimmick that was best displayed by the dinner scene (which was a trailer).
I’m happy to give the film a rewatch and re-evaluation, but as of right now it gets only an
AMBIVALENT RECOMMENDATION, as the artistry and technical prowess behind it is commendable. Also, Richard Kind’s Bing-Bong is just freaking amazing.
Last, it was known there were issues with the film for awhile, so if they were able to create this in a limited time and with limited sources, then that definitely deserves much applause.
