I’m a Pixar fan. I have been for years. I have made many excuses, at least to myself, for some of the studio’s more subpar outings until the mediocrity that was last year’s Lightyear. That is not to say I gave the studio a free pass or anything–I have skipped two thirds of the Cars franchise and I am completely fine with that–but looking over the films they have produced, even as Pixar’s parent company Disney has been making better overall animated features than Pixar of late, I would still count the best of Pixar over the best of Disney, at least since the Mouse went to computer generated animation. I just don’t think Disney has yet produced anything as good as the first three Toy Story films, Finding Nemo, Up, Monsters Inc, and Soul. Or especially today’s entry in the Stacker Challenge: Inside Out. When Pixar is on, it’s on.
By the by, Inside Out was directed by Pete Docter, one of the guys who has been with Pixar since the beginning, and not only directed this one, but also Soul, Monsters Inc, and Up, but he has a writing credit on WALL-E and the first two Toy Story films. Basically, if there’s a reliable guy at Pixar, it’s probably him.
I wrote once before how Inside Out, despite appearances, is not a kids movie. There’s nothing in Inside Out that won’t work for a kid. There’s, maybe, one joke about bears in San Francisco that they probably won’t get, and that’s about it. Beyond that, the bright colors and the slapstick sort of humor is very kid-friendly, and there’s very little here that a kid can’t watch and enjoy. My basic belief, though, is that adults will get far more out of Inside Out than children will, to the point where revisiting this film as an adult or even just as an older child or teenager might allow the viewer to pick up more of what’s going on.
Let me explain by going over a bit of what made this film for me, especially on my first viewing in a theater. The film opens with the birth of Riley and her first emotion with it, Amy Poehler’s Joy. Riley is a happy baby, and Joy is there. But at a certain point, Joy isn’t sure when, Sadness (Phyllis Smith) showed up, and Joy has no time for Sadness, spending much of the film trying to box Sadness off from the rest of Riley. In short order, Sadness is followed by Fear (Bill Hader), Disgust (Mindy Kahling), and Anger (Lewis Black), and those three Joy has no issue with. Sadness just seems useless to Joy, so Joy wants her to be as out of the way as possible.
By the by, this film has, like, perfect casting, especially as far as the five emotions are concerned. Black, for anyone who’s seen his stand-up routine, is an obvious Anger. Poehler’s best known character, Leslie Knope, is just such a positive person that loves what she does, and likewise seems a natural Joy. I’ve never really seen much of The Office, but Smith is excellent as Sadness, a character that may be the hardest to pull off since Sadness can’t really be funny the way the others are, and she likewise is not the villain to Joy’s hero. And Hader and Kahling just nail it…to the point where it’s something of a shame that neither are apparently currently signed on for the proposed sequel due to contract disputes. But I can’t think of anyone in Inside Out whose voice isn’t just perfect, right down to Peter Sagal, host of NPR’s Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, who has a single line as a disgruntled Joy for a birthday clown during the closing credits.
However, to get back to something I said above, Sadness is not the villain here. Neither are Anger or Disgust for that matter. There’s a simple reason for that: arguably, there is no villain here. Joy actually comes closest, and even then, it comes from ignorance, not villainy. There’s not even a Toy Storyish sort of antagonist in the form of a Sid-like character who isn’t really the main source of the conflict but is very much a villain. The only “villain” here is an 11 year old girl’s confusion over a cross-country move. That is the sort of thing that might cause a girl to feel no joy, lash out in anger, disgust, and fear, and bottle up her sadness. It’s why, in the end, Sadness is the real hero. She’s the only emotion that seems to get it, that human memory can be about more than just one feeling. The greatest joy is what can make a person feel better after coming out of a deep funk, after all. If the islands in Riley’s head are changing, it’s not because she moved. She’s maturing. Preschool antics and imaginary friends like the poor, doomed Bing Bong (another perfect casting in the form of Richard Kind) are not the sort of thing she would keep with her forever. The fact that Joy never noticed Bing Bong’s initial departure says something about Joy and the others as well.
It likewise helps that these characters are emotions. Despite being voiced by obvious adults, Joy, Sadness, and the rest still have no better understanding of the world than Riley herself does. The solutions they advocate at various points are a child’s ideas. And quite frankly, the first time I saw this on a big screen and I saw Joy, the one thing that jumped out at me was how, for lack of a better word, fuzzy she looked. That’s not just great computer animation: that’s Joy. She’s indistinct on some levels, a representation of a feeling. She’s not going to be solid. Neither are the others when the camera gets close enough to them. They all have this faint sparkliness, again for lack of a better word, around them. And why shouldn’t they? They’re emotions.
Ultimately, Inside Out‘s message is that’s it’s OK to feel emotions that might be played off as negative. It’s OK to be sad sometimes. Likewise, limiting how we feel can limit how much we get out of life. Recognizing that emotions are rarely simple, that we can have multiple feelings about the same events and even at the same time, these are basic ideas that even emotionally positive kiddie fare like Sesame Street, a show that would never tell you it was wrong to feel angry or upset, often glosses over. What Inside Out does beautifully is animate what the inside of the human consciousness might look like in a manner that is entertaining for people of all ages but also very deep if the viewer knows where to look.
NEXT: Not every psychological journey in film is as cathartic and family-friendly. Come back soon for one of my all-time favorites where a lonely man disintegrates into something awful, a film that inspired at least one wouldbe assassin, 1976’s Taxi Driver.
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