Inside Out

While I’m not going to be one of those dragging down Inside Out‘s “approval rating” on Rotten Tomatoes, neither am I joining the gush-athon of unstinting praise. I’m not entirely surprised. I hadn’t been impressed with the trailer, but I’d held out hope because of Peter Docter’s status as co-director, since he held the same position on Up (2009) — far and away my favorite Pixar movie. So I settled in with cautious optimism — only to be subjected to a short film called Lava, which I guess was there to make Inside Out look better. In this, it succeeded admirably. Then the feature started — and what I got was almost exactly the movie promised by the trailer. Almost. There are moments of brilliance here, but whether they add up to everything that’s been claimed is another matter. Will Inside Out really change the way you think about how people think? Maybe. But it didn’t do that — or anything like it — for me.

Now, before I hear the chorus of “It wasn’t made for you” and the usual objections, I question the claim that the movie is aimed at children. Movies with jabs at San Francisco’s new-agey vibe with organic broccoli pizzas and jokes requiring the viewer to know things like the last line of Chinatown (1974) are not entirely aimed at 9-year-olds. Inside Out clearly has more on its mind than entertaining the kids. That’s not a flaw — all the best movies of this sort are more than children’s entertainment. But it does mean that the defense that it’s not for adults won’t cut it.

The basic premise of personifying the emotions inside the head of a young girl named Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is interesting enough, but reducing those emotions to Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) is both curious and limiting. Why no other emotions? Why Disgust at all (except that it sets up the gag that Riley can’t stand broccoli)? We see other emotions like jealousy, but what we get isn’t jealousy — only Anger’s reaction to it. Then, too, these personified emotions feel a little too like something out of a junior-high health class. Regardless, these emotions are what we’re told control Riley — and that may be why Riley remains a largely unengaging character. In fact, she’s barely a character at all. We respond to her less because of anything she says or does, but because we’re expected to do so by the basic dictates of movies. After all, she’s supposed to be the film’s central character.

The plot hinges on Riley being thrown off balance because her parents (equally bland) have uprooted her and derailed her life by moving from Minnesota to San Francisco. That’s reasonable. Most of us have probably experienced this or something like it. (I spent at least two youthful years refusing to admit we’d moved to Florida — even to the point of putting “Kannapolis, North Carolina” under my name in books.) But that’s merely the underpinning for the movie’s exploration of the antics of her basic emotions — and what happens when her carefully constructed and guarded memories are lost. This causes Joy (Riley’s main guiding force) and Sadness to go in search of these memories. That’s fine, but what it turns the adventure into is awfully like a game where you have to collect things in order to win. That may or may not be a downside to you. It diminishes the otherwise lofty goals of the movie for me.

What works, however, works well. The individual worlds inside Riley’s brain are often very creative — some are more than that. Ideas like literal trains of thought are exceptional, even if their depiction is only adequate. Best of all, though, is finding Riley’s old imaginary friend, Bing Bong (Richard Kind), a fantasticated creation that combines animals (notably an elephant) and pink cotton candy. Here the film hits the kind of perfect blend of cleverness and emotional power it seems to have been striving for all along — and it’s a doozy. (It also can’t be discussed in any detail without giving too much away.) The big difference between this and Up is that Up engages the emotions right away and never lets go. Inside Out takes nearly half the movie to get there and can’t quite hold on. The overall theme of the story — that it’s OK to be sad and that joy and sadness exist in tandem — is certainly worthwhile. I just wish I could feel that Inside Out was quite worthy of its theme. Rated PG for mild thematic elements and some action.