Inside Out Review – Fantastic Innerspace Out

Inside out is much like it’s cast of characters; diverse, colorful, and almost as emotional as anticipated. The story centers around a young girl named Riley, and the many personifications of emotions that live in her head. Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger – everything Riley does is shown as the work of these characters in her mind, controlling her actions at the seat of a large control console, and storing her memories in glowing orbs.

The trailer explains this very well.

It has a great cast, probably one of Amy Poehler’s best performances. The art outside the head is realistic and tame, and the art inside Riley’s head, where most of the show takes place, stays grounded yet colorful and playful. Which is nice, as they could have easily gone too deep into a surreal mind-set. I am not ashamed. But it’s Disney and Pixar, so none of that is surprising. We can at least expect a polished product from Disney, until any sequel is announced. No, what interests me here is the idea of emotions being personified as drivers inside the head, and how it smooths over my seething rage.

Normally when I watch something, I become very angry when a character acts illogically. We have all seen a bad horror film where people keep getting killed for doing stupid things, like hiding in a room full of chainsaws, or violating the sanctity of the battle buddy system. For me such rage extends to other actions: when a character has been doing something dangerous, and you can just tell that this idiot is going to touch something, and now you have to spend the next act of the movie watching smarter characters clean up their mess.

That’s generally not a good story. I don’t want to watch people clean up an easily avoidable mess. In Inside Out most of the characters are like this, but it makes sense. Sadness is sad, Joy is joyous, Fear fearful, Anger is played by Lewis Black, and Disgust is Jealous. Normally I would expect level headed humans to think things through and temper their emotions, but I can’t reasonably expect that of personified emotional constants. Midway through the movie a few of the emotions have left the Control Center, leaving an incomplete set to try and drive Riley. They try so hard to think of what the absent emotions would do, and then fail miserably because they are literally incapable of being anything else. It’s a nice justification for the kinds of simple actions that make a narrative easily digestible by kids. I mean, you will still get into an infinite “why” loop with your kid trying to explain that Anger is angry because he is anger, but at least Pixar helped out and took you straight to the circular logic that you will spend the next few years trying to get back out of your child.

I love movies like this, where you take a look inside a person. In Physical forms like Fantastic Voyage, Innerspace, Osmosis Jones, or more abstract emotional ones like this, and that one episode of that show you are thinking about. (Muppet babies, I think -editor)

Inside Out is a good movie. While It can be a bit annoying at times, it sets itself up in a setting where it can use that to it’s advantage. I recommend it.