Inside Out (5/5 Stars)

Imagine a movie that is at once wholly original and also completely familiar, startlingly simplistic in its scope yet containing multitudes of creativity and cavernous depths of emotion, and that can also make you laugh routinely, thrill you unexpectedly, and move you to near tears consistently. You would be describing Pixar’s newest feature “Inside Out,” a journey inside the mind of an 11-old-girl from Minnesota who has just moved to her new home in San Francisco. She endures a first day at a new school, a disappointing hockey tryout, and vegan pizza. Little stuff it seems to grown ups but to Riley it is the greatest obstacle she has gone through in a life that hereto had been filled with consistently joyful days. It is also the greatest obstacle her brain trust has ever handled. And by brain trust I mean Pixar’s anthropomorphized metaphor for her mind: a team of emotions that help Riley out from a mission control room in her brain.

The emotions have been perfectly cast from the broad and ever more productive landscape of quality television entertainment. At the center is Joy, voiced by the ever effervescent Amy Poehler (Parks and Recreation), Disgust, an appropriately snarky Mindy Kaling (The Mindy Project), Fear, a fever pitched Bill Hader (SNL), Anger, Lewis Black (The Daily Show) as himself, and finally Sadness, Phyllis Smith (The Office) in all her humble muted Eeyore-like glory. They function, in a tribute to Pixar’s ability to have it all, as part comedy team, part tearjerk squad, and part science lesson. (If their was an emotion left out, I would posit “desire” which would be the antithesis of Disgust much like Anger and Fear or Joy and Sadness play off of each other so well. Perhaps “Desire” shows up at 13).

This is the sort of movie that transcends movie-ness. Instead of talking about whether the movie looked good or was funny, you want to talk about how the movie was about what it was about. After all, everything that is shown onscreen corresponds to something everybody has experienced but does not really understand. We have these unconscious bodies that operate seemingly disconnected with our consciousness. What connect the two are our feelings. But how do those work? Pixar probably is not that far off. The emotions experience Riley’s life through her frontal lobe (this is a bit like the front windshield of a starship). They can’t tell Riley what to do, but they do color her experiences as they form memories (represented by luminous balls). If it is a happy memory, then Joy turns it yellow. If it is a fearful memory, Fear turns it purple. At the end of the day before the colored balls are shipped off to long-term memory (which apparently is consistent with what really happens when we are asleep), if the wall of short-term memory balls are mostly yellow than the team feels that they have had a good day. Their mission is to keep Riley happy. This presents a problem with the character of Sadness whose presence and efforts to help generally disrupt the mission. At one point Joy draws a circle around her and tells her to not leave it as a way of doing her job correctly. Psychologists have a word for this I believe. It’s called Repression. That’s a rather heavy topic for an animated movie to tackle, but Pixar goes even further. Near the denouement of this movie they will tackle the big D. Depression. And the way they do it will probably make you cry and afterwords you will probably think about why you cried and find a very plausible explanation in the way Pixar has portrayed the workings of the emotions in your mind. And you will probably feel better in an enlightened way because feeling sad is sometimes the most healthy way to respond to external stimuli. Psychologists would call that Emotional Maturity, an attribute that the marketers in our modern society have a habit of scorning. Fear it, they say, and buy this thing that will make you happy again. No, says Pixar, Sadness is there for a reason and the wise person would understand its utility. This is the sort of thing that Pixar has made a children’s movie about. To do that as perfectly as they demonstrate is to be a masters of emotions themselves. I tell you this: not since Hitchcock has a moviemaker been so in tune with what the audience is experiencing moment to moment.

But I get too serious. Let’s talk about comedy and how Pixar does not waste a moment in the entire movie when a joke can be somehow shoehorned in. First of all, the brain trust with all their distinct personalities form as good a comedy troupe as there can be. Through a mishap Joy and Sadness are stranded in Long Term Memory and need to find their way back to the control room.  Their journey takes them through several wonderful set pieces as Imagination Land, Abstract Thought, and Dreamworks Productions that has among other things a unicorn as a movie star.  They meet many comic characters. My favorite are the brain beureaucrats. One team works at Long Term memory and “forget” any balls that are rarely used. For instance they take away all of Riley’s piano lessons except “Heart and Soul” and “Chopstix”. But the really funny part is what they keep: a commercial jingle for ‘Triple Dent’ gum which they reuse again and again as a practical joke. Riley is destined to never ever forget it. Another good example is the two guards in front of the door of the subconscious (which hides an angry clown) that perform what sounds like an Abbot and Costello routine about whose hat is “my hat”. Then another time Joy knocks over two boxes, one of Facts and the other of Opinions. As she tries to put them back she exclaims how similar they look. And I haven’t even mentioned the imaginary friend voiced by Richard Kind who is the best part along with everything else.

“Inside Out” is one of Pixar’s best movies. And I say one of the best because I happen to believe “Wall-E” is one of the best movies ever made. So is this movie. When Wall-E (and “The Dark Knight”) failed to get a Best Picture nomination the Academy expanded the field to ten pictures the next year. That should easily include “Inside Out” this year and I’m not saying it should win (I can’t because I haven’t seen all the other movies) but I would be totally fine with the possibility.

UP (4/5 Stars) June 8, 2009

UP is the latest film from Pixar, that collossas of animation studios that have spawned such great works of art as Toy Story, Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, Ratatouille, and Wall-e. Pixar’s reputation is second to none. They are the most consistent creator of not just great-animated features great movies in general. And to say one of their movies lives up to the Pixar reputation doesn’t merely infer that the movie is good. It infers that the movie is great. That it contains warmth, humor, creativity, a wealth of imagination, images that will dazzle the eyes, and a story that will delight audiences both young and old. UP, a story of adventure about an elderly man and his floating house lives up to Pixar’s reputation.
UP starts with a love story between two young adventurers, Carl and Ellie. Their dream is to fly to South America and explore the rain forest. They grow up and get married. Ellie is a zookeeper and Carl is a balloon salesman. They save up for the trip but life gets in the way and eventually Ellie gets cancer and passes away. All of this is played without dialogue and accompanied by one of the happiest/saddest melody I’ve heard in a movie in some time. At 78 Carl has turned into an old grump threatened by developers and being coerced into a nursing home. What does he do? He attaches a mountain of balloons onto his home and takes off in his flying house toward the jungles of South America. An over-enthusiastic boy scout who was attempting to earn his merit badge for assisting the elderly unexpectedly joins him. Together they have adventures in the brightly colored rain forests of South America encountering a rare bird and a truly evil long forgotten explorer who lives in his very own museum/blimp catered to by his army of masterly trained talking dogs. Adventures ensue that include much slapstick comedy, sight gags, and elderly combat that surpasses anything seen in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the last film about old people adventuring in South America. Plenty of the daredevil antics take place in very high places. People afraid of heights should beware. Up is definitely up there for most of the time. 
The only drawback this had was the 3-D aspect of it. Now this is the best 3-D movie I have ever seen, but that in it is not saying much. Traditionally 3-D doesn’t so much help in telling a story as it directly provokes the audience. In this movie, Pixar has done a lot of good work in all the close shots, adding some impressive depth and detail to the picture. But in faraway shots, the 3-D looks distorted and blurry (especially with the 3-D pigeons and clouds). Quite frankly, it distracts from the picture. 3-D is a good gag in Disneyland amusement rides but it doesn’t help when one is trying to suspend one’s reality. 3-D has a tendency to take the viewer out of the picture and point out to the viewer that he is not in South America but in a movie theater wearing silly glasses. Another thing that 3-D does is unintentionally make the screen darker. The sunglasses that need to be worn diminish some of the brightness that is associated with animation. The rainforest in UP are not as stimulating as they should be. Having said all of this, I recommend that people see UP on the biggest screen possible without 3-D. I bet the movie will be brighter, more involving, and, dare I say, better.
UP concludes a trio of films by Pixar (started by Ratatouille and Wall-e) that are based on almost unmarketable ideas (rats that cook, robots that love, and now old adventurers). Their next films are said to be Toy Story 3 and Cars 2. Perhaps we will look back on these three years and proclaim it as Pixar’s golden age, the time when they were so on the top of their game that they could turn weird quirky ideas into not just great insightful animation but also crowd-pleasing blockbusters. Could it get any better than this? It’s hard to believe, but with Pixar anything seems possible.