Cartoon Corner- Inside Out

Originally posted at the DL June 2015

*squeeee* omygodohmygod PIXAR IS DOING SOMETHING THAT FEELS LIKE PIXAR AND NOT LOW RENT DISNEY



So let's itemize the obvious strong points of the film based on this then talk about specific victories and flaws.
- Fucking gorgeous.  Not just well animated, but the designs on the characters and small details therein are great stuff.  Joy is literally glowing!
- Excellent marriage of fantastic concepts with grounded, personal storytelling
- Excellent use of celebrity voices.  Lewis Black as Anger man.
- Uplifting humanist messaging without talking down to the audience.

There's one really glaring flaw that puts a huge dent in the movie for me.  In simplest terms, Sadness is just... despicable in the first half of the movie.  They use protagonist-centered morality too heavily, more than even works for the character involved frankly.  Joy narrates that she doesn't see why Sadness is there... and we as the audience ALSO don't see a reason for Sadness to exist for over half the movie.  If anything, the rest of the emotions are under-reacting to her, because she's generally presented as an unstoppable engine of sheer destruction, dedicated solely to destroying all Riley holds dear and reveling in the sheer carnage in its wake.  The best thing we can say of her in the early portions is that she seems to not particularly want to do any damage, and that it's simply in her nature to do so and she will invariably act in accordance with that nature unless forcibly held in check.  She doesn't want to be a monster, but is.

Intellectually we know this is untrue.  And having read ahead, I knew going in the actual function of Sadness in the movie's theory of emotion.  But her presentation is less that of a healthy functioning bit of humanity and more the personification of Depression, a hostile sickness who wants nothing more than to hold fiercely to the saddest of times and dwell on them to the exclusion of all else, until all they can actually do is lie motionless, crippled, forever.  And again, this doesn't seem to be the intent.  But at no point prior to being allowed control does Sadness actually express meaningful concern for Riley's well being.  Some offhand remarks about not derailing the system, but that feels more like her trying desperately to hold into a win and justifying it as being dangerous to do else.

And again, intellectually this is justifiable in story.  Of course Sadness doesn't know much of anything, Joy's been controlling her forever, and once she does have some control she does function as an aspect of the whole rather than an outside, destructive force.  But as the audience, this jars a bit with the first half of the movie.  We spent a lot of time considering her as a hostile force, without any clear signs this was untrue.  You can't define the view of the movie so heavily by the protagonist that we're blindsided by the actual development of the plot, at least not in this sort of story.

Everything else is great!

The interactions of characters in human space are jealousy-inducing.  The interactions of the emotions are generally pretty funny.  The journey through the mental space is a neat interpretation of psychology and neurology.  Every gag where we jump into a non-Riley person's head is great, both as movie storytelling and just for being funny.  Lots of little details to obsess over.

Take her to the moon.

The issue I took is really distracting after the fact, but in the moment when you get to the endgame you're willing to forgive it all.  Although yes I was bothered in the first half by "god I really dislike Sadness and want her to fail.  That's... not good."  But hey.  As long as the emotions line up when they need to, y'know?

Rating- 8/10