There will be some spoilers (not huge and probably obvious) but you have been warned.
I went to see INSIDE OUT last night. I liked it a lot, but I didn’t love it as much as I’d expected to. Like FROZEN I think it suffered from the hype. It’s still a very fun and charming movie, but on balance I liked Tomorrowland better.
The reason was a basic writing 101 problem — they didn’t ground me in the theme early enough in the film. I thought the idea that we need both sadness and joy if we’re to have a full range of experiences was the message/theme, but it was a little unclear until fairly deep into the film. They kept offering me other alternative threads that might be the theme so I kept grabbing mentally at them instead of being taken where the writers wanted me to go.
I did love the fact that a brain researcher was part of the team that made this film. In many way Len Wein had it right when he said this was a film for adults that kids would probably enjoy.
Lewis Black absolutely stole the film in his type cast role as Anger. Amy Poehler was appropriately chirpy as Joy (to the point that I wanted to kill her). The other stand out for me was Richard Kind as Bing Bong.
My two favorite moments were when our heroes had to go into the area of abstract concepts, and the cat brain at the very end. It was also fun when they cut into “headquarters” in the parents brains as well.
This is one of those films where I may need to see it again with my expectations re-calibrated and re-evaluate. I had that happen on Thor: The Dark World too. It was a good deal better than I initially thought on my first viewing.
I also watched it last night. I haven’t seen Tomrrowland so I can’t speak to comparisons there. And yes Frozen was played up and hyped for a moderate movie. That really doesn’t have much to do with my thoughts on Inside Out.
I loved how sadness was the second emotion to arrive at headquarters. Because for children sadness is a part of life that they don’t understand.
The duel stories were interesting in how the outer story affected the internal and vise versa
Discussing the film with Connie Willis something else came clear. There is a great example of proper foreshadowing in the film. (Go watch it Mass Effect team). When Joy picks up the golden sphere with the memory of the folks and the team and Sadness says, “Yeah, that’s the day she missed the goal and the team lost the championship.” At the time you think, “oh there goes Sadness being all downer and stuff.” Except it’s the key to Joy’s growth and understanding at the very end. The sphere is both blue and gold.