Mediocre Movie Club Movie Reviews

Inside Out

1/2/2016

B+
3.30

A young girl's emotions - Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness - conflict on how best to navigate a new city, house, and school.

Directed by Pete Docter

Initial Review by Blair Setnor, Shane Setnor, Jon Kissel, and Bryan Hartman

No writeup this week. Instead we podcasted. Dig into the comments for more discussion.

I loved this movie. -Blair

22 Comments

Admin

1/3/2016 12:45:32 am

Place holder for replies to Podcast

Bryan

1/3/2016 10:18:17 am

1st Question: What is the story of your islands? Which have fallen? Which have stayed? Are there any which have emerged?

Bryan

1/3/2016 10:22:40 am

Chelsea and I were talking this morning. Inside Out 2 or Inside Out 10 should be the inside of a parent's brain shortly after having kids. Most things would be destroyed and there would be major blackouts from lack of sleep.

Drew

1/3/2016 11:21:02 am

Nice job, crew.

There was a "greatness" echo when Bryan talked around the 34th minute. Sounded pretty cool.

Agree with Blair on Rowling. Thank you, Blair!

Jon, you picked two bad films to compare. Try again!

I spoke to a Vietnam vet, he's my friend actually, and he told me when his crew returned they were met by a crowd who spit on them.

Go Shane's tournament and Phil's game. Go Blair.

Andrew

1/3/2016 12:57:59 pm

Blair and I both cried a great deal on the plane. To inside out.

Sean

1/3/2016 09:09:43 pm

Pasted from prior review...

How does the burden of expectations effect one's enjoyment of a film? Is it possible to look past a movies failure to reach the lofty expectations thrust upon it and still be a good movie or does that failure result in an altogether negative experience?

These are the questions that need answered to review Inside Out.

First, it is understandable why the critics love this movie, it really is full of heart and explores our emotional makeup more than any other movie of this or most genres. While the idea of exploring the characters that make up emotional thoughts and decisions has already been done in the raunchy Fox comedy of the 90s Hermans Head, Inside Out deals more with the effects our emotional memories have on our growth.

And now for the spoilers.
Inside Out revolves around 5 core emotions Joy, Sadness, Disgust, Anger, and Fear within a 12 year old girl named Riley. These emotions work in a mission control within Riley's brain and help her determine her attitude and drive how she feels about things around her. Each experience creates a memory defined by one of these emotions. Joy (Amy Poehler) is the captain of the ship, she's the first around from birth (our little bundle of joy) and has driven
the majority of these memories. The other emotions yield to her and despite their own nature they want Riley to be happy. Occasionally major life events develop "core memories" which are the driving force of Riley's personality. When the movie begins Riley has 5 core memories and they are all Joy's and create "Goofball Island Friendship Island Hockey Island Family Island and Honesty Island"
When Riley's family moves from Minnesota to San Francisco the story gets going. Of course a young girl moving across country is going to have some obstacles emotionally and our story is set in motion when Riley is introducing herself to her new class and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) touches one of Joy's memories turning it sad. This leads to Riley crying in class about moving and develops the very first sad Core Memory. Joy panics and attempts to dispose of the sad core memory and in doing so knocks her own joyous core memories out and next thing you know her personality islands no longer have power and Joy and Sadness get sucked out of Mission Control and out into Riley's long term memory. This immediately turns Riley into an emo shell and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) Fear (Bill Hader) and Anger (Lewis Black) to run the show. They each take turns trying to make Riley happy and doing what Joy would do before failing miserably as Riley gets more and more unhappy before eventually deciding it would be best to run away back to Minnesota.
The real story is Joy and Sadness and their return to Mission Control. They encounter of course meet new characters along the way and run into obstacles trying to catch the "Train of Thought" back to Mission Control. The most important of these is long lost imaginary friend Bing Bong who wanders Riley's long term memory and hoards all of his best moments in hopes of not being forgotten forever. The most entertaining characters are the pair whose jobs are to get rid of faded memories- names of the presidents?- keep Washington Lincoln and the fat one get rid of the rest. These two love an old crappy gum commercial jingle and for fun send it up to Mission Control which is why dumb things always get stuck in our heads. They send this up 4 or 5 times throughout the movie and it works every time.
Inside Out attempts to bring us both our laughs and our tears through Joy and Sadness' journey back to Mission Control, their interactions with the characters of Imagination-land and Joy's ultimate realization that Sadness is a vital part of Riley's emotional makeup and not just a screw up as the ultimate payoff for the film is the direction Pixar decided to go and is the direction of maximum emotional effect which is exactly why the critics love it.
I'm here to say they're all wrong. They could have gotten to the same end result without sending Joy and Sadness on their journey and left all 5 in Mission Control. The most entertaining parts of the movie were when all 5 of the emotions were together making decisions and driving Riley. By spending so much time inside Riley's head Riley and her life is an afterthought. 2nd best part was when they would give glimpses into the insides of other characters heads. Dad thinking about hockey during family dinner and panicking when he realizes mom wants him you talk. Mom thinking about the sexy latin helicopter pilot she could've had instead of Dad every time we interact with someone else it works. Unfortunately we get this only 2 or 3 times in the movie then again as the credits roll. The best of which is inside the cats mind.

By choosing the path of maximum of emotion the chose the minimum entertainment. I think they could have ended with the same emotional result in a much entertaining movie simply by spending more time in the world and

Lane

1/4/2016 10:55:12 pm

I agree that the movie would have been more entertaining if all characters would have stayed together, but I think it would have actually been more accurate if joy had been lost in memory world until Riley went to college.

Bryan

1/5/2016 08:55:05 pm

I disagree. Some of my most joyous moments are in junior high and high school. Some of the worst are there, but pre-working was a glorious time.

Sean

1/4/2016 10:13:36 am

By choosing the path of maximum of emotion the chose the minimum entertainment. I think they could have ended with the same emotional result in a much entertaining movie simply by spending more time in the world and leaving the 5 main characters together.

Between failing to reach the expectations of being A- best Pixar ever and B-simply just a Pixar movie. Inside Out is ultimately a disappointment. Off the top of my head I prefer all 3 Toy Storys, Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, Up, Wall-E and probably a few more if I looked them up.
Leave me in the Rotten Camp
C

forgotten because I was parenting while I reviewed-
Hader was under-utilized as fear. Easily the best performance. Mindy Kaling was an afterthought as disgust- I think they were just stacking the deck with voice talent and everything she did could've been moved to anger or fear. Casting Lewis Black as Anger was lazy. He basically pulled a couple lines out of his act and called it a day.

Bryan cut off the grade section. Also, 1 caveat, I watched at a drive-in. I'd like to see again but Mindy wasn't a fan either and wouldnt let me buy it for the kids for Christmas.

Sean

1/4/2016 11:06:27 am

And Hunger Games Catching Fire is the best, haven't seen MJ2 yet. Agree MJ1 is a bit boring.

Bryan

1/4/2016 11:23:26 am

What do you mean cut off the grade section?

Sean

1/4/2016 11:26:02 am

I guess it was too many characters for 1 comment, so I pasted what was cut off as well

Bryan

1/4/2016 12:01:32 pm

This would be my first experience with a word maximum. My bad.

Sean

1/4/2016 10:41:21 am

As expected you guys picked parts of the review I had problems with but missed the point. The point was they made a movie with maximum emotion instead of maximum entertainment.

Bryan

1/4/2016 11:24:20 am

I just picked what I could remember.

I think maximum emotion was entertaining. I still stand 100% behind my statement that Inside Out should be a kids cartoon.

Sean

1/4/2016 11:12:36 am

I'm positive Kissel has seen Lethal Weapon 5 and 6 or at least the making of those films via Always Sunny.

Jon

1/4/2016 02:41:19 pm

True enough. The originals probably aren't as into blackface.

Sean

1/4/2016 10:22:06 pm

Only 50% of 5 and 6 were blackface

Joe link

1/4/2016 07:26:31 pm

Before I write my review, my grade for Inside Out is an A.

Lane

1/5/2016 12:21:36 am

Well, sorry I missed the podcast but holiday vacation fun time threw me off my regular movie watching schedule and instead forced me to binge watch “Making a Murderer,” which is pretty much the opposite of this movie unless you add the emotion “outrage.”

But, actually, maybe I could tie the two together…

I could rehash why this movie is great, but a lot of comments and other reviews hit these highlight, so here’s what I was actually wondering throughout the movie – why are Pixar movies so much better than, say, the Ice Age movies or the Panda karate movies. The computer animation techniques are fantastic in all these modern movies (if you’re sentimental for hand drawn movies, then I don’t know what to do with you – modern animation is superior in every way, and that is a fact that did not get mixed up with my opinions); voice acting is a limited art form, so no one is giving either exceptionally great or exceptionally poor performances; they all have witty scripts that make great use of sight gags and imagery puns that you can’t do in live action film; all those movies use the basic hero journey motif, so nobody is breaking new ground in plot or storytelling. So why is Pixar almost always heads and tails above the rest?

I’m going to stick with the psychology theme and make these student loans pay off in this review by suggesting that Pixar achieves greatness because all their movies play on our fear of death. If I could draw a Venn diagram*** where death, sex, and power were the three circles, Pixar movies would squarely fall into the death circle, with a slight lean towards power (there’s almost always a relationship that relies on a power dynamic – usually parent/child). In fact, in this diagram, Pixar and several horror movies would tread similar territory – they sing different tunes, but they’re all playing off the same chart.

When you hear that an animated movie “is for adults just as much as kids,” what’s probably being said is that the movie is toying with your fear of getting old and dying. Kids don’t understand it, because we don’t start to develop our death drive until we’re adolescents. So, you add in plenty of animated physical comedy for the youngsters while the storyline provokes subliminal fear in their parents. Viola! Pixar magic.

What are the best Pixar movies? I would argue “Up” (pretty explicit death theme there); “Finding Nemo” (from aquariums to shark infested WWII submarines – death); the Toy Story movies (ultimately about the death of childhood)…there could be others mentioned, but the theme probably still holds.

And this too, I think, is why “Inside/Out” is ultimately so appealing – from the moments of sleep in the film (our daily practice for death) to that elephant thing disappearing in the pit, the movie is a constant reminder that nothing lasts. And when art helps us experience this, it’s what makes us feel deeply. And we need that – feeling deeply, ultimately, is what keeps us alive.

So, I’m all for Pixar movies because by reminding us of a temporality, they remind us that we’re also alive right now. Few movie makers do this really well, but Pixar and Docter did it here. Not Pixar’s best, but maybe a top 5. Grade: A-

***I decided to draw a Venn diagram and post it to Facebook.

Drew

1/5/2016 08:42:45 pm

I just finished Inside Out and where was I supposed to cry? Also here sane questions that came to mind. Is Joy mean and selfish? The key to happiness is through......Sadness? While those are more micro in theme, the macro lens should be set about moving forward and having all emotions present for a balanced life.

Now for the characters. Joy was well done by Amy Poehler but it was too good. She was great to start but she annoyed me by the end. I love optimism as much as the next guy but Joy became "that girl." Also, Phyllis from The Office was another well casted actress. She nailed Sadness and had enough spots where her role was significant but not obnoxious.

The other minor parts were well done but Sean is right about Bill Hader and Lewis Black. Hader was underutilized and Black's appearance was like a segment of his bit.

Other than what I aforementioned, Inside Out's point was absent. It was interesting to see the several points of emotion in different people along with Riley but what else was present?

It was a nice family film that pulled at heart strings or can be a decent date movie but anything larger than that is too much.

Grade: B

Cooker

2/29/2016 09:31:04 am

Herman’s Head, the animated feature. Brief review since this was done nearly two months ago.

The imaginative side of me enjoyed this film. Could this be how our minds work, how our memories are processed, etcetera? As for someone like me with chronic depression, I really liked the character of Sadness, not necessarily what she said, but how she reacted and worked alongside the others. I related to that quite a bit, how sadness can overcome good memories and how it’s simply needed in life.

I also enjoyed the concept of the memory dump and the various characters tinkering with memories. I felt bad for Bing Bong and his sacrifice, but saw it coming.

Inside Out was a thought-provoking film with an overall okay story. Not very many “laugh out loud” moments for me, and nothing really stood out probably in the first half of the movie until everything began to tie together as a process. Definitely enjoyable. Going A- on this one.

Inside Out

B+
3.30

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Inside Out

B+ 3.30

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B+
3.30