Heard The Concept, Seen The Movie: Inside Out

The Good: Decent voice acting, Moments of emotion that work
The Bad: Plot is exceptionally forced, Overblown concept, Bland protagonist
The Basics: Inside Out is Disney/Pixar's attempt to make a psychological exploration film, but it falls apart under any real scrutiny.


The other day, my wife was pitching to me an idea that I'm still kicking around in my head. After a number of spinnings of the Susanne Sundfor album The Silicone Veil (reviewed here!), she said, "I think you should do a blog each month about all the things you wanted to review, but couldn't muster up the enthusiasm and energy to do a sophisticated analysis. There should be a one-paragraph review for all the things you went to review but just stopped caring about before you tried to write the detailed review." I know that, at the time, she was just annoyed because she did not like that particular album and was sick of hearing it - and, to be fair, I was stuck trying to review it because it was so mediocre - but it was an intriguing idea in its own right. I might be one of the few reviewers who feels a complete sense of "ho-hum, meh, this review is just not writing itself" about the new Disney/Pixar film Inside Out. But that is where I am; if I were to take my wife's suggestion, Inside Out would definitely have been in the group review with a very simple "not worth it."

Inside Out is garnering almost universal praise from critics everywhere and, not to be contrarian, it's an okay film, but nothing truly exceptional. There's no point in me being the 1000th reviewer to point out that the concept is virtually identical to the 1991 FOX sitcom Herman's Head - which I watched, so the film's "hook" seemed instantly unoriginal to me - but one of the things I haven't seen from other critics is that the concept of Inside Out is made instantly unambitious by the fact that the protagonist is an average American girl.

For the five people who have not yet heard the concept, Inside Out is a film that focuses on the emotions inside the head of Riley Anderson, an eleven year-old girl from Minnesota, whose family moves to San Francisco. Personified inside her mind are Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Fear, and Anger and the five negotiate with one another to control Riley. The plot to Inside Out - I'll get to that later - is almost incidental; the entire point of the film is the concept. Writers Pete Docter, Josh Cooley, and Meg LeFauve are trying to illustrate how emotions work inside a girl's head and how they adapt to obstacles. Regardless of the execution, the purpose of the film is instantly baffling: Inside Out is of no use to children, who lack the metaconscious awareness to truly understand abstractions like the personification of emotion and adults who see Inside Out should either have the emotional awareness to get the concept instantly or are probably sociopaths (in other words, if you don't understand how your emotions are working by the time you reach adulthood, you probably have a personality disorder of some sort!). Children are too young to have developed empathy and adults watching the film are more likely to be bored by the obviousness of the concept than entertained by it. The purpose becomes confused then because Pixar is clearly trying to go for something sophisticated - the sheer volume of emotions expressed and moments intended to play off the viewer's empathy - but the only way the film actually works is on an entertainment level.

On a psychological level, Inside Out becomes incredibly problematic in that most of the action occurs while Riley is asleep and the stakes in play postulate that Riley could have a complete psychotic break and/or suffer from a serious memory issue while she is sleeping. The basic plot of Inside Out is that Riley is moved from Minnesota to San Fransisco and her expectations are instantly upended; the brownstone her family moves into is not what she expected, the moving truck is delayed so she has to camp out on her bedroom floor and the pizza she and her mom go to get for comfort food is covered in broccoli (which Riley dislikes). After a bad first day at her new school, Riley lets Anger and Sadness take over and she is sent to her room as punishment. Riley then falls asleep, but inside her head, Sadness breaks into the core memories and, in the process Sadness and Joy get whisked away to long-term memory and have to find their way back.

Their quest to return to headquarters is aided by Bing Bong, Riley's imaginary friend, and along the way, the core islands of Riley's mind become disconnected from Headquarters and their existence is threatened. The analogy becomes very troubling there: that one bad day of not particularly traumatic events can lead to the collapse of how a person thinks and feels, is somewhat ridiculous. The mind has internal defenses outside the basic emotions to protect core memory and to protect certain associations. It takes things like traumatic new core memories - death of a loved one at a young age, abuse, etc. - or physical injury (an ax to the brain, severing the connective tissue between the brain's hemispheres, etc.) to destroy those connections. But, Sadness getting curious and looking at core memory nearly makes Riley into an entirely different person in Inside Out and to buy the menaces Sadness and Joy face on their journey back to Headquarters, viewers have to buy the premise that the mundane usurption of expectations could lead to a complete psychotic break. But then, Inside Out would be a much harder sell for viewers if Sadness was simply operating Riley for a time after her move to San Francisco.

Which leads me to the real problem with Inside Out. Riley is a healthy girl going through average problems. Inside Out could have achieved all of its goals by having a much more extraordinary protagonist. Seeing inside the head of a manic depressive, watching how difficult the emotional negotiations are for someone when they are traumatized, contrasting the emotional thought patterns of a healthy person with one who suffers from trauma, mental illness or abuse would educate children, give adults something to empathize with and start discussions for those who suffer those conditions with those people in their life who do not understand it. Moreover, the plot would not simply be a contrived adventure piece then; the concept would effectively sell the story and plot without the need for anything inorganic or forced.

Amy Poehler does a decent job providing the voice of Joy; she's actually so good that I did not feel like I was watching Poehler or listening to any one of her routines while watching Inside Out. Similarly, Bill Hader is good as Fear, though Lewis Black is used exactly like one would expect for Anger.

Inside Out is one of those films that becomes worse the more one thinks about it - like how can Bing Bong be running around the memory centers of Riley's brain instead of being trapped by his very nature on Imagination Island?! If it could be used to teach selfish young people how to empathize with others, it might be useful, but instead it encourages a very ego-centric interpretation of the film, especially for unsophisticated, undeveloped younger audiences. As a result, the more I thought of the film as an average film, the more it upset me; it's a movie where the concept could work, but the execution at the script level does not. Instead, Pixar and Disney made a brightly-lit, well-voiced film that has forced conflict and only a surface understanding of the complex concepts it attempts to explore.

For other Pixar films, please check out my reviews of:
Monsters University
Toy Story 3
Up
WALL-E
The Incredibles
Monsters, Inc.

4/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2015 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Wall-E: Yet Another Disney/Pixar Film Does Nothing We Haven't Seen 100 Times Already.

The Good: Moments of animation, Moments of concept
The Bad: Moments of character construction/animation, Predictable plot, Pacing, Human animation.
The Basics: WALL-E might entertain, but the animation and lack of genuine character are likely to trouble a more sophisticated audience.


I will admit I am not the big fan of Disney/Pixar films that some people are. Sure, computer animation is great and it has come quite a long way since computers were first set to the task of entertaining us mere humans, but there is much that CG effects are used to cover these days. I suppose my big, general gripe with computer generated effects is that often they are used to gloss over a terrible or underdeveloped script and trade a movie based largely on spectacle as opposed to substance. When I first saw WALL-E, I had not seen a Disney/Pixar movie since Monsters, Inc., so my perspective comes largely from being an adult cinephile with the desire to see movies of substance.

I decided I needed to break that trend and go see Disney/Pixar's cinematic offering, WALL-E in order to keep up as a reviewer. WALL-E seemed like a pretty safe bet for me as I am quite the fan of science fiction. Alas, fans of science fiction such as myself will be disappointed by the simplicity, effects and story of WALL-E. This is very much a children's movie and adults will find little to get excited about as it does not even try to be more than what it is. For those adults dragged along to WALL-E, it's not likely to satisfy.

WALL-E is the last living thing on Earth, an old robot who has been left behind after a mass exodus of humanity. He is alone, sentient and is essentially a shy hermit who cleans up the debris left over after most organic life has left the planet. He communes with cockroaches and has a routine (cubing up old garbage) and he even keeps himself entertained by watching old movies. Everything changes for WALL-E when an expedition arrives to check on the status of Earth, led by a robot named EVE. Instantly smitten, WALL-E tries desperately to make her acquaintance.

WALL-E departs Earth as a stowaway, trying to catch EVE. His mission to find the other robot takes him to the edge of known space and puts him in the company of humans and robots who seem baffled by his determination to find the robot who broke his isolation.

In traditional Disney (and, I'm assuming, Pixar) fashion, a grand adventure ensues to move WALL-E and his companions around and in the process, the blundering humans learn a little something about heart. First, what WALL-E does right. The opening portion of the movie is not bad. WALL-E's desolate Earth is a very vivid place and the loneliness is palpable, much the way Will Smith's character's was in I Am Legend. For the first segment, there is only music and WALL-E's beeps and boops for language. And, of course, the moment the clean, thin flying droid pops up, there is the musical "oohhh" and "aahhh" we might expect.

The underlying message of WALL-E, when it tries to be more than just a spectacle of computer animation, is a decent one. No, this is not An Inconvenient Truth for children, but it does make a statement about the environment. It also does a fair job of making a commentary on the human dependence upon mechanization, while subtly reinforcing that the opposite is not true. Fortunately, there are no comments that are objectionable to either children or adults. Unlike the last animated feature to severely disappoint me, A Shark Tale, that had terrible problems in its message, WALL-E is inoffensive in every possible way.

Unfortunately, this is part of the problem with the movie. In addition to being inoffensive, writer-director Andrew Stanton managed to make a film that was remarkably sterile, starting with the character relationships. WALL-E has a fairly unique and compelling character in the spirit of silent movie acting and that character works up until the moment EVE shows up. It's love at first sight and it's uncomplicated and bland and it has been done. It is the very typical fairy tale type crush wherein the protagonist simply falls for the first person to cross their path. There's nothing that connects them other than that they are both robots (and, because it is associated with Disney, one is "male" and the other is "female," ergo it's love and it's meant to be). As a result, WALL-E's quest across the galaxy is somewhat silly and pointless. His motivation is not all it is cracked up to be and as a result, watching him in action seems like action for the sake of action as opposed to actual character.

This gets to the other serious issue with WALL-E and that is in the character design. WALL-E suffers because it works hard to create a reality that is very three-dimensional, fresh and real. The sequences with just WALL-E and the other robots work fine for a while, especially at the beginning with WALL-E and his routine. But from the moment the first human appears on screen, that reality is shattered. The humans look like the Claymation animation from the Puffs tissue commercials and that very animated, obviously stylized people. They look like figures from a children's picture book and while WALL-E is clearly derivative of Number Five from Short Circuit, the humans look less real. They have a sense of appearance and even movement that is strikingly animated as opposed to real.

Moreover, as soon as WALL-E leaves Earth, most normal physics principles fail to apply. The very limited, careful sense of movement with which WALL-E rolls around his wasteland become suspended for giant, outrageous shots of spaceships roaring and robots sliding and bumping around. EVE's hovering makes sense, but in the scenes on Earth, she is bound by some normal sense of physics. This is essentially the difference between normal, obvious movement in the real, physical world and Wylie Coyote physics. Sadly, for the entertainment factor, WALL-E quickly degenerates into the latter sense of movement.

More than that, the movie transforms from being a stark and realistic story with a very obvious sense of plot and routine and becomes a series of witlessly collected misadventures as WALL-E pursues EVE. He moves from one group to another, searching and the interactions with other robots and humans do very little to advance his bland character or his cause. WALL-E begins as respectable and experimental, but it then becomes very pedestrian and predictable as the ancient robot trundles along in his motivationless quest.

Children watching this might, at worst, find value in chasing after the person of their dreams, but for adults, it is difficult to watch this film in that it is largely uncomplicated by such things as motivation or genuine character development. At best, children might take away the need to take care of the environment.

On DVD, the film looks good enough. WALL-E is presented with two new animated shorts (Presto and Burn-E), two featurettes on designing the sound and universe of WALL-E and deleted scenes which fix none of the problems of the original movie. As well, there is a commentary track featuring director Andrew Stanton. It is, however, not enough to push it up in my book.

But for all of the praise I had heard about WALL-E going in, it just seemed like a very simple animated flick with little to recommend it. It is too predictable and obvious and director Stanton seems obsessed with movement and utilizing the majesty of computer generated animation as opposed to creating something with lasting substance and originality.

Still, it's harmless enough for children who might be entertained by the spectacle.

For other Disney animated films, please visit my reviews of:
Tangled
Toy Story 3
A Christmas Carol
Up
The Incredibles
Monsters, Inc.
The Little Mermaid
Lady And The Tramp
Sleeping Beauty

4/10

For other film reviews, please visit my index page here!

© 2011, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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Monsters That Are, But Don't Know Why: Monsters, Inc.

The Good: Funny, Good animation, Good voiceovers
The Bad: Predictable plot, Unsure of What It Wants to Be
The Basics: Recommended for the achievement in animation more than the story that begins at too ambitions and degenerates into too juvenile.


Occasionally, there's a film that looks like a kid's movie, but turns out to be an adult film. Monsters, Inc. almost does that. It starts out and after the opening credits, quickly establishes itself as something that is not simply a children's film. The lines and concept are too deep for most children.

Monsters, Inc. begins as the story of a town in a recession. The monster town is experiencing a power shortage based on an inability to scare children. Apparently, they power their town on children's screams. The concept is above the heads of most children: you're talking economic terms, many of the lines are thinly veiled references to nuclear energy (the parallels between scream energy and nuclear are uncanny). Moreover, it's not at all a stretch to see the thinly veiled homosexual motif throughout the film. I mean, that's pretty easy considering the number of closets in the film.

Okay, so the film focuses on the cyclops Mike and the Big Blue Monster Sully. They currently hold the record for most scares and life is good for them. Then, one of Sully's competitors decides to commit fraud and in the process, contaminates the monster town with a human child. Human children are feared and - in the nuclear metaphor - viewed as a contaminant.

Sully ends up with the child and basically, the rest of the film is a confused chase around the monster town and the human world.

If you've seen Toy Story, you know the plot to Monsters, Inc. It's just different characters and minor variations on the theme. The problem is, the film doesn't know what it wants to be. One moment, it's adult with all sorts of intelligence as a metaphor for power, economics and gay rights issues. The next moment, it's a predictable plot with an infantile approach to the world.

I would suggest that there's too much in this to be truly enjoyable to little children. That is, the villainy of the villains in the film are based on economics, terms outside a child's understanding. Adults are likely to not enjoy the film as much for the predictable plot and infantile resolution. The film is probably ideal for younger teens as it lacks real character depth and lasting intelligence.

What is likely to be enjoyable to all is that the film is often funny. And the animation is incredible. The hair moves like hair on Sully, the bodies move like bodies. The computer animators at Pixar show a greater appreciation of How Things Work than most Disney films of late have shown.

The film is fun, but inconsistent in its ability to make commentary and when it fails to do that, it degenerates into something far more meaningful and, for those who like things to make sense, supposedly "fun."

For other Disney animated films, please visit my reviews of:
Tangled
Toy Story 3
A Christmas Carol
Up
The Incredibles
The Little Mermaid
Lady And The Tramp
Sleeping Beauty

6/10

For other film reviews, please check out my index page by clicking here!

© 2011, 2001 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.




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Up: A Good Movie I'm In No Hurry To Ever See Again.

The Good: Emotional resonance, Opening, General animation
The Bad: 3-D effects are entirely underwhelming, Entirely predictable
The Basics: Fairly depressing, Up has a good protagonist and tugs the heartstrings, but is not at all worth seeing in 3-D!


Two summers ago, as Summer Blockbuster Season heated up, I was one of the few (only at the time, actually) to enthusiastically pan the boring, predictable and utterly disappointing WALL-E, which was Disney/Pixar's big outing that year. I enjoyed that film up until the first appearance of people, which took the movie on the fast track to Crapville. So, to say I was at all excited about seeing Up, last year's Disney/Pixar attempt to recapture animation magic in the summer, when my wife said she wanted to see it would be an outright lie. I was mortified to be giving Disney eleven bucks for each of us to see this movie in 3-D; the special effects for the three-dimensional effects are entirely underwhelming. In fact, my wife, who ooh'ed and ahh'ed over that year's Monsters Vs. Aliens when we saw that in 3-D barely gasped once from the effects in Up.

That said, Up is vastly better than I predicted - though I did call it quite accurately as yet another movie where the big character journey was getting the cranky old man to hug the supposedly-cute little boy - and has some real moments of emotional impact, especially for anyone who has ever lost a loved one. But in this way, Pixar continues its tradition of starting the film amazingly, then drifting off. In this case, Up is an erratic character journey that has truly adult levels of emotional pathos in its protagonist in the opening sequence, devolves into a buddy action comedy and ends up as a pretty predictable story that even children are unlikely to be surprised by. And if the damned thing hadn't made me cry a couple of times, I'd be able to pan it as being terribly unoriginal and dull. As it is, Up is a good film, but it is far sadder than most animated films and it carries those emotional moments remarkably well. Where most Pixar films include a bevy of adult jokes to keep the adults stuck with children seeing their moves mildly entertained, Up keeps adults engaged by illustrating with stark realism loss and the effects of life on the plans we make.

Carl Frederickson and Ellie are childhood sweethearts whose relationship is based on a common interest in the adventures of explorer Charles Muntz. Ellie dreams of going to South America, to Paradise Falls and she and Carl grow up together. They marry, buy a house, and begin working together at the Zoo, with Carl selling balloons and Ellie working with the animals. They save money to go to Paradise Falls, but broken roofs, busted tires, and accidents force the pair to use that money for other things life throws at them. When Ellie is unable to have children, they look to Paradise Falls again for their dreams, but life puts that plan on the back shelf until Carl is a widower living alone in their house with developers building skyscrapers around him. He is visited by Russell, a Wilderness Explorer, who wants to earn his Assisting The Elderly badge to advance, whom he sends on a snipe hunt the night before he is to be sent to a retirement home.

Carl has a plan of his own, though, and when the nursing home workers come, he releases the anchors on thousands of helium balloons he has inflated and connected to his house. The house lifts off and on his journey away from civilization; he discovers that Russell has tagged along. Carl awakens with the house and Russell just a canyon away from Paradise Falls and he and the boy begin lugging the house to its intended resting point. On the way, they encounter an actual snipe and a dog outfitted with a collar that allows him to talk (Dug). Dug, though, is not alone; he is part of a team of dogs sent out by an aged Muntz, who is hunting the snipe for his collection. Carl, Russell and Dug must team up to save the snipe from Muntz and his dogs while protecting Carl's floating house.

Up is a film preoccupied with missed opportunities and it is genuinely sad. Writers and directors Pete Docter and Bob Peterson (who voices Dug, despite sounding like Seth Rogen) manage to pull on the viewer's heartstrings quite effectively by continually bringing back a book of adventures Ellie started as a little girl and illustrating the intended resting place of the house. For anyone who ever had dreams to have adventures with someone who died, the opening sequence is a tear jerker, as is the final shot of Paradise Falls in the movie.

That said, the effects are underwhelming in 3-D and for those thinking of seeing it that way, save your money; there are very few shots that are visually complicated enough to justify the additional expense of the three-d ticket. As well, the Pixar artists cheat on this one in ways that only a child would not be annoyed by. The best example is in the initial liftoff sequence. Russell is nowhere to be found. While he claims he was under the porch, he is not visible there, nor is he on the porch as the house sails off. As well, Pixar has some pointless sequences that seem like they work better for the trailer than the actual film, like Carl descending the stairs on an electric chair system, which is a protracted scene of Carl sitting and his chair going slowly from top right to bottom left of the screen.

What the movie has going for it - outside a very Disney sense of schmaltzy "heart" - is a character who is more likable than I anticipated. Carl makes the movie - in fact, I loathed Russell for his canned sense of childish selfishness used to motivate Carl at turning points in the movie - and he is an interesting and viable character. Having lost his wife, he is a reasonable hermit and he is quite well-conceived. When Carl finds the Spirit Of Adventure, he becomes the boy in the movie and that is refreshing and fun. Moreover, he is not a curmudgeon the whole movie; the opening sequence makes him emotionally realized and funloving in a way that viewers instantly empathize with him.

The animation is good, though it is somewhat limited by Pixar's obsession with one style of person for their human models. Still, they pull off a few cute moments like the way the clouds Carl and Ellie look at all turn into babies. They also pull off a wonderful sense of tension in chase sequences, though the movie is entirely family friendly with dogs all clearly surviving huge falls and explosions. There is enough movement to keep little children entertained and enough depth to keep adults from being miserable through the movie, save that the themes of the movie are often about loss and missed opportunities, which are more likely to depress adults.

But the character arcs are predictable, especially as more information is given about Russell. Abandoned by his father, he looks to Carl as a fatherfigure and Carl's journey is to rise to that. The character arcs here are entirely predictable. The dialogue is generally good and the writers get some real laughs from all of the dialogue given to the dogs. I think, though, the only other time I laughed in the movie was when a frog mimics an alarm clock in South America.

And that is why Up won't have the leg some seem to be predicting for it. This is a largely depressing movie and it is thematically more heavy than its title suggests. Sure, there is movement and energy, but largely it is about a man giving up the dreams he can no longer live with the person he wanted to and making new adventures with those he suddenly finds himself with. It IS better than I thought it would be, but it is not one children are likely to get excited about returning to over and over again and adults who have lived through enough death will want something more uplifting than this.

For other Disney works, please check out my reviews of:
Tangled
Oceans
Toy Story 3

5/10

For other film reviews, please be sure to visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2010, 2009 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.


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