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The Star Warrior Reviews: Inside Out
10 years ago
General
Hello Internet!
So just got back from watching Inside Out, the latest Pixar movie that literally dives into the human psyche. Now think about this for a moment, this is a show for kids about stud that only the likes of Sigmund Freud could understand. You would think something like this would be doomed to fail epically when you consider Pixar’s track record over the past few years, which was just a few reiterations of Cars and a few other okay movies like Up, but thankfully they were able to pull it off.
The movie starts us off at the beginning I when I mean the beginning I mean right at the birth of our two main characters, (or three if you count the girl) Joy, Sadness, and the girl Riley. Apparently mom and dad were The Boondocks fans. So as expected Joy and Sadness, being the exact polar opposites of each other, don’t exactly get along but at least they are not on the verge of killing each other as we have seen most forms of storytelling, they at least try to get along.
As the movie moves on we are introduced to the three side characters, Anger who seems to have an obsession with collecting cures words, Fear who is responsible for keeping Riley out of trouble, and my personal favorite Disgust who sadly gets very little screen time. In fact Pixar just kind of skims over these last three characters. Now I do realize that the focus is on the main characters but still as awesome as these three are you think that they would get at least a little more attention. They are like the Minions in Despicable Me, when they are on they steal the show but they are not on nearly long enough.
As for the plot, everyday these five emotions will guide Riley through her day, which will end with her expelling memories. These memories are small color coded glowing orbs, each color matching the Emotion they came from. Among these glowing orbs are the five key memory orbs witch are made up of the significant events in Riley’s life and are each used to power an island, so yes this doesn’t just take place in the tiny little room we see in the trailer, however as far as worlds go this one is still fairly small as the five island are no larger than a min mall and we don’t really get to explore them. But don’t worry there is a much larger world behind these island known as Long Term Memory where the emotions store all of the smaller memories.
So what is the significance of these memories, well most of them are created by Joy, in fact all of the core ones come from joy. But when sadness get a core memory Joy dose everything she can to stop it from activating and creating a new island as she wants to make sure that Riley stays happy, but in the process of trying to stop this core memory Joy and Sadness get sucked out of their little control room along with all of the core memories. They are launched into long term and must now find some way to get back to the command center and return the core memories otherwise the three island that are powered by the core memories will crumble into a large gaping hole that separates Long Term from the Control Tower known as The Dump and in The Dump memories are forgotten. To make matters worse Riley now only has Anger, Fear, and Disgust as her primary emotions with Anger being the most dominant.
Now I’m not going to spoil the ending for you as this still in in theaters, (Or at least it was when this review came out) but what I will tell you is this is probably one of the best movies Pixar has come out with. The animators and writers really have a lot of fun with these emotions as they don’t just show use what goes on in Riley ‘s head but they throw in quick little segments where they go into the heads of some of the other human characters and they are always incredibly funny, and of course the story is all Pixar as it teaches a valuable lesion for both kids and adult. Again, no spoilers. Now I could sing this movie’s praises all day BUT this movie isn’t without its flaws. During their time in Long Term, Joy and Sadness comes across Riley’s old imaginary friend Bing Bong, played by Richard Kind. Bing Bong, being an imaginary friend of an eleven year old, is kind of living out on the streets. Apparently he hasn’t heard of Madam Foster’s. Speaking of which, he looks like a knock off of one of the characters of the show, sort of a pink fluffy elephant with a feather duster for a tail. Now granted he does look like something a child would come up with but seeing that I have seen this design in a 2D cartoon a huge number of times his appearance isn’t really that impressive. But anyway that’s not my problem with Bing Bong, my problem with Bing Bong is that he is constantly causing problems. Honestly every time the characters get into trouble he is the cause of it. He actually gets arrested at some point and thrown into the Super Ego where they place some of Riley’s most terrifying memories. Still he is minor annoyers, not to the degree of Jar-Jar, and he does help out some when he’s not moping over how much of a screw up he is. This is a happy imaginary friend right? And there is with most movies there are a few points in the movie where you take a look at a scene and wonder how it is the animators didn’t catch it. For example, these characters glow in the dark. Though it looks interesting and all when you place them against a dark background, there is one scene where they are trying to slip past a couple of guard and they are putting out more light than a nuclear reactor, and the guard don’t notice them even when they are RIGHT BEHIND THEM! Anyway these problems are minor but still how can you not notice a flicking spotlight.
Despite it’s short comings this is a really good movie, I’ll give it about a 9 out of 10. But before I close I of cores have to address the short that came out with this movie, Lava. True to form, Pixar posted another short along with the movie, and at times they can be better than the movie itself. This is not the case but then again it is hard to live up to Inside Out.
Lava is a love story about two Volcanos. No I am not making this up, Lava is in fact a love story between two anthormorphic Volcanos. God help us if they decide to make baby Volcanos otherwise the world will know a who new meaning of “Banging”. Anyway the story is told to us in song about a lonely volcano watching other couples snuggling on his beach, even Crush from Finding Nemo gets some, but the poor volcano is all alone, so he sings about the day he will finally find someone to “Lava”. No I did not come up with this pun, this is all Pixar and the main lyric to the song. I swear I roild my eyes every time I heard it. Other than that it looks really good, the design choses for the volcanos are very creative and original, and the story holds you in a decent amount of suspense despite it being fill with more cheese than macaroni. 7 out of 10.
Anyway hope you enjoyed my first review, feel free you put your own thoughts in the comments, and be sure to show my gallery some Lava. :3
So just got back from watching Inside Out, the latest Pixar movie that literally dives into the human psyche. Now think about this for a moment, this is a show for kids about stud that only the likes of Sigmund Freud could understand. You would think something like this would be doomed to fail epically when you consider Pixar’s track record over the past few years, which was just a few reiterations of Cars and a few other okay movies like Up, but thankfully they were able to pull it off.
The movie starts us off at the beginning I when I mean the beginning I mean right at the birth of our two main characters, (or three if you count the girl) Joy, Sadness, and the girl Riley. Apparently mom and dad were The Boondocks fans. So as expected Joy and Sadness, being the exact polar opposites of each other, don’t exactly get along but at least they are not on the verge of killing each other as we have seen most forms of storytelling, they at least try to get along.
As the movie moves on we are introduced to the three side characters, Anger who seems to have an obsession with collecting cures words, Fear who is responsible for keeping Riley out of trouble, and my personal favorite Disgust who sadly gets very little screen time. In fact Pixar just kind of skims over these last three characters. Now I do realize that the focus is on the main characters but still as awesome as these three are you think that they would get at least a little more attention. They are like the Minions in Despicable Me, when they are on they steal the show but they are not on nearly long enough.
As for the plot, everyday these five emotions will guide Riley through her day, which will end with her expelling memories. These memories are small color coded glowing orbs, each color matching the Emotion they came from. Among these glowing orbs are the five key memory orbs witch are made up of the significant events in Riley’s life and are each used to power an island, so yes this doesn’t just take place in the tiny little room we see in the trailer, however as far as worlds go this one is still fairly small as the five island are no larger than a min mall and we don’t really get to explore them. But don’t worry there is a much larger world behind these island known as Long Term Memory where the emotions store all of the smaller memories.
So what is the significance of these memories, well most of them are created by Joy, in fact all of the core ones come from joy. But when sadness get a core memory Joy dose everything she can to stop it from activating and creating a new island as she wants to make sure that Riley stays happy, but in the process of trying to stop this core memory Joy and Sadness get sucked out of their little control room along with all of the core memories. They are launched into long term and must now find some way to get back to the command center and return the core memories otherwise the three island that are powered by the core memories will crumble into a large gaping hole that separates Long Term from the Control Tower known as The Dump and in The Dump memories are forgotten. To make matters worse Riley now only has Anger, Fear, and Disgust as her primary emotions with Anger being the most dominant.
Now I’m not going to spoil the ending for you as this still in in theaters, (Or at least it was when this review came out) but what I will tell you is this is probably one of the best movies Pixar has come out with. The animators and writers really have a lot of fun with these emotions as they don’t just show use what goes on in Riley ‘s head but they throw in quick little segments where they go into the heads of some of the other human characters and they are always incredibly funny, and of course the story is all Pixar as it teaches a valuable lesion for both kids and adult. Again, no spoilers. Now I could sing this movie’s praises all day BUT this movie isn’t without its flaws. During their time in Long Term, Joy and Sadness comes across Riley’s old imaginary friend Bing Bong, played by Richard Kind. Bing Bong, being an imaginary friend of an eleven year old, is kind of living out on the streets. Apparently he hasn’t heard of Madam Foster’s. Speaking of which, he looks like a knock off of one of the characters of the show, sort of a pink fluffy elephant with a feather duster for a tail. Now granted he does look like something a child would come up with but seeing that I have seen this design in a 2D cartoon a huge number of times his appearance isn’t really that impressive. But anyway that’s not my problem with Bing Bong, my problem with Bing Bong is that he is constantly causing problems. Honestly every time the characters get into trouble he is the cause of it. He actually gets arrested at some point and thrown into the Super Ego where they place some of Riley’s most terrifying memories. Still he is minor annoyers, not to the degree of Jar-Jar, and he does help out some when he’s not moping over how much of a screw up he is. This is a happy imaginary friend right? And there is with most movies there are a few points in the movie where you take a look at a scene and wonder how it is the animators didn’t catch it. For example, these characters glow in the dark. Though it looks interesting and all when you place them against a dark background, there is one scene where they are trying to slip past a couple of guard and they are putting out more light than a nuclear reactor, and the guard don’t notice them even when they are RIGHT BEHIND THEM! Anyway these problems are minor but still how can you not notice a flicking spotlight.
Despite it’s short comings this is a really good movie, I’ll give it about a 9 out of 10. But before I close I of cores have to address the short that came out with this movie, Lava. True to form, Pixar posted another short along with the movie, and at times they can be better than the movie itself. This is not the case but then again it is hard to live up to Inside Out.
Lava is a love story about two Volcanos. No I am not making this up, Lava is in fact a love story between two anthormorphic Volcanos. God help us if they decide to make baby Volcanos otherwise the world will know a who new meaning of “Banging”. Anyway the story is told to us in song about a lonely volcano watching other couples snuggling on his beach, even Crush from Finding Nemo gets some, but the poor volcano is all alone, so he sings about the day he will finally find someone to “Lava”. No I did not come up with this pun, this is all Pixar and the main lyric to the song. I swear I roild my eyes every time I heard it. Other than that it looks really good, the design choses for the volcanos are very creative and original, and the story holds you in a decent amount of suspense despite it being fill with more cheese than macaroni. 7 out of 10.
Anyway hope you enjoyed my first review, feel free you put your own thoughts in the comments, and be sure to show my gallery some Lava. :3
