Director: Pete Docter, Ronnie Del Carmen
Distributor: Disney
Duration: 95 minutes
Inside Out (Blu-ray) – Movie Review
Joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust and many more, are feelings everyone of us experiences at a certain time, and some might go through all of these in the course of a single day. Nonetheless, these feelings and the experiences linked to them often define who we are and earlier in life, who we may become. Inside Out is Pixar Animated Studios’ latest creation, which is pretty much about life itself, with its many emotions, happy times, hardships and oddities. Everything is turned inside out, just so Disney can tell you this tale.
Everyone has certain feelings or emotions inside of them and Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is no exception. The moment she is born, we dive inside her head, meeting Joy (Amy Poehler), who is soon accompanied by Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling) and last but not least, Sadness (Phyllis Smith). Riley leads a rather happy life, thanks to Joy’s managing capabilities, and she has already created many ‘core’ memories, that are starting to define her personality. In her mind these feelings are portrayed as small islands, which get activated when she thinks of a core memory, which makes her do exciting things, such as playing hockey, spending time with her family and simply having fun. Everything goes quite well, until Riley and her mom and dad move to a new home, in the busy streets of San Francisco, far away from her friends and hobbies. Nonetheless, things stay rather positive, at least until Sadness wants to ‘help’ out, when it comes to helping Riley.
While it’s unclear what Sadness wants to do precisely, her help is not that appreciated by Joy, seeing whenever Sadness touches a memory, it changes color and becomes a sad memory. Even though Joy does her best to give Sadness annoying tasks, to keep her occupied, Sadness still tries to meddle in her affairs. When Sadness touches a memory, which is currently playing in Riley’s head, Riley becomes sad and because of it she creates her first sad core memory. As Joy wants Riley to stay happy at all times, she does her best getting rid of the sad core memory but due to all the hassle that is going on, Sadness, Joy, the sad core memory and all the happy ones get sucked out of headquarters, making it the mainframe of all the memories Riley has. While things should be solvable when both of them go back to headquarters, with the memories, it seems their time is very limited. Riley is unable to express happiness, and her islands that define her personality are slowly breaking down because of it.
Overall the movies pace is fairly slow and enjoyable, but things still trot along nicely, entertaining you for the full length of the feature film. As the movie is more about a child growing up, it’s presented in a very amusing jacket and young and old can easily relate to what is going on, onscreen. This makes this movie an ideal family flick, with a rather heavy undertone nonetheless. This movie might look adorable and funny, it’s actually quite serious, with a healthy dose of humor to keep things from becoming too heavy.
Given the rather ‘heavy’ topic of the movie, things still look bright, colorful and especially child friendly. While one could argue that a movie like this could also be brought in a totally different fashion, this one feels perfect in every single way, even with primal feelings such as sadness, anger, fear and disgust, still looking adorable.
The voice acting for this movie is, like always when it’s a Pixar movie, stunning. The characters go hand in hand with their respective voice actors, and things feel very convincing, even though this movie is all about overacting. While the cast mentioned above does a great job, it’s easy to say that Richard Kind also provides a great performance by portraying Bing Bong, Riley’s old imaginary friend, who is currently roaming around Riley’s memory.
Inside Out’s Blu-ray release comes with some traditional extras such as how the movie came to life, or the strong women behind the scenes who helped with its creation, but also some other pleasant special features. Those who wish to get a little more ‘Inside Out’ content, will be able to see a short clip which is all about Riley’s first date, or at least, what looks like it’s going to be a first date. If you like mushy love stories, the short film Lava will entertain you for a bit longer as well.
Conclusion
Inside Out is another great movie in Disney’s portfolio, which is about the many feelings a human being will experience throughout his or her life. All of the fun times, as well as the hard ones featured in the movie are relatable for young and old and everything is presented in a very attractive package. Certainly a must-see, if you’re into Disney and Pixar, who are masters in bringing a beautiful story to the big and small screens.
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Great review!