Inside Out 2 (4/5 Stars)

The original Inside Out, a brilliant Pixar product that explored the mental landscape of an eleven year old girl named Riley and populated it with a group of emotional characters including Joy, Fear, Disgust, Anger, and Sadness, ended with a promise for a sequel. On the control panel in Riley’s main consciousness was a big red light entitled “Puberty”. If Riley’s inner monologue had been the scene of drama/comedy before, wait until she became a teenager. It has been nine whole years since Riley was 11-years-old. But now that she is finally 13 and about to start high school, we have a sequel.

“Inside Out 2” stands as a prime example of the rewards and risks of sequels to beloved movies. It pales in comparison to the original, but how could it not when the original was a great film. It adds more facets to Riley’s mental landscape and more emotional characters, but in doing so crowds out the original plot devices and characters. It ventures into a territory, puberty, that is not for children before avoiding much of what makes being a teenager not for children. But even with all of these drawbacks, it is the highest grossing film of the year and biggest money maker in Pixar’s history (1.6 billion dollars by last count). So, how could Pixar not make this movie? How could Pixar not make a third?

“Inside Out 2” stands at a very efficient 96 minutes and contains almost as much, if not more, material as the original. But while “Inside Out” was a fully integrated, organized and intuitive tour of the mental landscape of a child, (even the throw-away jokes made sense in a vaguely scientific manner, for instance the earworm Triple Dent commercial that won’t be forgotten), the mental landscape of “Inside Out 2” is more of a haphazard and disjointed affair. Some ideas work better than others. The “Brainstorm”, a tornado replete with flying lightbulbs, is a clever representation of a real mental phenomenon. The “Sarchasm”, a valley in the mental landscape that opens up like an earthquake fissure when Riley utters a sarcastic remark, is just a pun.

And whereas the original’s core idea presented a fairly straightforward mental process, the formation and storage of memories and how emotions color them, here we have something more abstract and, probably, less scientifically accurate. The sequel deals mainly with Riley’s formation of beliefs about herself. This is presented by vertical strings that connect a pool in the subconscious with the conscious control panel. Each string presents an idea like “I’m a good person” or “I’m not good enough”, which, I believe, is meant to be a manifestation of Riley’s personality.

But is that a good example of what a personality is? I”m not so sure. And what is a personality anyway? One of the more important books I’ve ever read, “Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book” posited that we don’t really have personalities, but we think that we should, and worrying about this absence or overcompensating for the same is the cause of much anxiety.

(Because I’ve mentioned it. One of the better thought experiments in Lost in the Cosmos directs the reader to consider why people can misread various astrology descriptions (Virgo for Pisces and so forth) and still be moved by its accuracy. The answer is that a person is so multi–faceted in terms of personality, that potentially any of the signs could apply on any given day. This is the counterintuitive reason as to why astrology is pointless. It’s not because it is inaccurate. It is because you are so complicated that the differences between the signs are nominal, and therefore meaningless.)

Speaking of Anxiety, this emotion shows up as the main antagonist. Other emotions that are introduced to the team are Embarrassment, Envy, and Ennui. Missing once again is Desire. (Just add some Lust to Envy and you’ve got it, but then again, this is a children’s movie). Anxiety is mainly concerned with planning for the future, which has its benefits, but not when it bottles up the other emotions (literally) and performs a hostile takeover. The best thing about Inside Out 2 is its portrayal of an anxious sleepless night and a climatic panic attack.

Still, when compared with the average teenager’s puberty, Riley is doing just fine. The action takes place over one weekend at summer hockey camp where Riley worries mainly about whether or not she will make the high school team. One of the missed opportunities here has to do with Riley’s teenage counterparts. Like many movies about teenagers, the protagonist is given a complicated inner life while everyone else at school is portrayed as not-anxious automatons. Indeed, what is hardly ever explored in movies for teenagers, is probably the hardest thing about being a teenager, which is you inevitably spend your days in forced interactions with other teenagers. This truth is hard to grasp for minds just getting used to their own consciousness let alone trying to contemplate the mental inner-workings of those around them. It also fights against the movie industry’s happy willingness to placate the audience’s narcissism. It would be a rare movie indeed that had a character realize that everyone in high school wasn’t thinking about them, for good or ill, because they were all too busy dealing with their own shit. Inside Out 2 misses this valuable lesson because it doesn’t delve too deep into the murky waters of puberty in the first place. But hey, there is always the next sequel.

Toy Story 4 (3/5 Stars)

The first scene in Toy Story 4 takes place nine years before the main plot. Woody and the gang are still Andy’s toys. Andy’s family gets a visit from a neighbor/friend who is in the market for household items. Among a few other trinkets, Andy’s family gives away the Bo Peep lamp because Andy’s sister has grown out of it. Bo Peep, you may remember from the first two films, is the romantic interest of Woody. Before Bo Peep is packed up in a box and shipped away forever, she and Woody have a sad moment. And for some reason, I’m sitting there weirdly reminded of that scene in slave movies where the mother is sold down the river.

In the first two movies, the audience wasn’t asked to explore existential questions about the “human condition” of these toys. The third movie had serious undertones, parodies of political science and at least one scene of toy adultery but didn’t ask questions that made me feel weird. Toy Story 4 ventures there. To a certain extent, I am fine with this, but I have to ask: would a child like this film?

When we last left off, Woody and the gang had been bequeathed to a cute little girl named Bonnie. She’s a good kid, but unfortunately for Woody, isn’t as interested in male cowboys than Andy had been. (She’s likes playing with Jessie more). Woody is left in the closet most days where he becomes increasingly lonely and increasingly desperate. On Bonnie’s first day of kindergarten, she uses some arts and crafts to make a new toy out of a spork, some popsicle sticks and some googly eyes. She names him Forky, writes her name on his feet, and, incredibly, the toy comes to life (Forky is voiced by Tony Hale). The toy is essentially born before our eyes and I’m sitting there weirdly thinking “Frankenstein’s Monster”. This Forky is an ugly abomination of a toy.

Forky knows this. He has an immediate suspicion he is not a toy and should not have been created. There are several scenes of him declaring himself trash and trying to throw himself away into various trashcans. And I’m sitting there weirdly thinking Forky is attempting suicide over and over again. The situation is played for laughs, and it is definitely funnier that what I’m making it sound like here, but the existential implications are unmistakably there.

Bonnie’s family goes on a road trip. They stop over at a place with a traveling carnival. Here, against all possibilities, Andy meets Bo Peep. Bo Peep is a lost toy now. She is homeless but does not seem all that bothered about it. After all, she ain’t working on Maggie’s Farm no’ mo. She likes kids but no longer measures her worth by how much she is loved by one. The arc of Toy Story 4 is essentially Woody realizing that he doesn’t need Bonnie and that there is a world elsewhere: the Emancipation of Woody.

Are these just toys? Woody has thoughts, feelings, friends, and an interest in romance. Isn’t he essentially human in the ways that count? If he’s human, shouldn’t he have rights? Shouldn’t he be getting paid for the work he is doing for that kid? Why does he just blindly do whatever he is told? When he states with certainty that there is nothing more noble than being a child’s toy, doesn’t he come off as brainwashed? The more Toy Story 4 explores the “human condition” of these toys, the weirder the franchise gets.

Do these toys ever die? If Forky can come alive through a child’s imagination, shouldn’t he die through the inverse of that situation. Wouldn’t it make more sense for lost toys to once again become inanimate objects. Maybe that would instill the fear of god in these toys and create that sense of fear that would bound them in perpetual and desperate servitude to their child masters. Just something I was thinking about when I left the theater. Are the children pondering the same things?

The Informant! (4/5 Stars) September 25, 2009

What was he thinking? 


That is the main question that Director Steven Soderberg and Actor Matt Damon try to tackle, as they take on the most bizarre case of corporate whistle blowing in American history. The Informant! is technically a biopic, but since the story is so very odd, it comes off as a comedy. Not because it is necessarily trying to be one but because the facts are so outlandish and the main character is so wacky that it leaves the viewer bewildered and baffled to the point where they simply have to laugh. 

Try to stay with me here. There’s this guy named Mark Whitacre. He was orphaned at age 3 when he was in a car accident. A wealthy man in Ohio who ran amusement parks adopted him. He got a lucky break there. He met his wife in 8th grade marching band, they’ve been together ever since. He went to an Ivy League School and got a PHD in Biochemistry. He was hired by ADM, a processing conglomerate that manufactures corn into every single thing in the supermarket (check your labels: high fructose corn syrup, lycene, glucenate, etc.) He was promoted into the business end of things and made $350,000 a year as a vice president. It was at that point that he decided to become a whistleblower for the FBI. The FBI didn’t come to him. He went to the FBI. He admitted a price-fixing scheme that ADM was in on with their international competitors (“Just watch, in a couple months a can of soda (aka corn) will be 5 cents more”). He eagerly wore wires and planted cameras. In the end he would become the highest-ranking whistleblower in American History. At this point this story would seem like a drama like ‘The Insider.’ But the story is just getting started. 

Mark Whitacre while cooperating with the FBI that he invited into his company had been embezzling millions of dollars through various forgeries and shell companies. And that’s only a fraction of what he was lying about. The second half of the movie consists of Matt Damon lying to ADM, lying to the FBI, lying to his own lawyers, and probably most significantly lying to the press. Layer after unbelievable layer is pulled off and we are left wondering what kind of person would do this. How could somebody so smart be so stupid? In the end Mark Whitacre managed to get three times the jail sentence (9 years) then the other executives at ADM (3 years). The way he got there took a certain kind of brilliance, incredible courage, blinding naivete, and a strange kind of stubborn madness. 
The big question of course was: What was Mark Whitacre thinking? Did he really think that he would be promoted to run the company after he had just brought it down? Did he really think the people at the company would hide his embezzling after he had betrayed them? After he is caught red-handed his exasperated lawyer (played by Tony Hale) advises him to take the 3-5 year plea deal. Did Mark Whitacre really think he would win the ensuing trial? At plenty of points in the movie the FBI and Attorney General are left with their mouths agape when they find out what their star informant is doing behind their back. I mean is that even his real hair?

I’m not going to say anymore as much of the story’s pleasure is watching it unfold in front of you. I will just leave you with Mark Whitacre’s own words as he was awaiting the judgment at his trial. “Wow! What a Ride…I would just like to apologize to everybody…I am currently taking medication.”