Aubrey MaloneInside Out (G)
When I was in secondary school, I remember getting an essay to do called ‘Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought’. I managed to scramble something together on the theme but it wasn’t until years later that I appreciated the real truth of the dictum.
It’s also the theme of this entertaining animated film – don’t forget your 3D glasses – from Pixar. The theme also reminded me of a page called ‘The Numskulls’ that I used to love in the Beano comic a few years earlier. It featured the inside of a man’s head. Little people ran around like headless chickens in his brain. Maybe there’s nothing new under the sun because that’s basically what we get here as well.
An 11-year-old girl called Riley moves from Minnesota to San Francisco with her parents but she can’t settle in her new abode. She pines for the ice hockey games she used to play with her local team, The Prairie Dogs.
Enter ‘Sadness’, one of the emotions at the control tower of her mind. Sadness is a blue-faced character with huge eyes and a white polo-neck jumper. She’s overweight but cuddly. Whenever she gets too frustrated at the magnitude of life’s problems, she throws herself onto the ground in tears without even putting out her little hands to break her fall.
Another character called Joy tries to cheer her up but it’s a tough task. Then there’s Anger, Fear and Disgust. They all play their part in making Riley who she is. But when Sadness upsets her ‘core memories’, Joy and herself get accidentally ejected from the control centre. Riley’s mind now becomes a cauldron of emotions as Fear, Anger and Disgust have to take over.
As I watched the chaos unfolding I found myself wondering if Riley was influencing the characters in the centre or vice versa. At most times they seem to be calling the shots. This would mean she has no free will. Maybe I shouldn’t be getting so technical about it all. (Now and again she does seem to make decisions off her own bat).
It’s a lovely film which also brings in lots of elements – dream, nightmare, memory, imagination, abstract thought and even the subconscious. They’re all splurged across the screen in phantasmagoric splendour. Apprentice Freudians will have a field day. There are also some quips that have been injected for adult consumption, as seems to be mandatory for animated films these days – or films, period.
The only thing missing, I felt, was music. This is a film tailor-made for songs. If Pixar had put them in, Inside Out could have been this year’s Frozen. Without them, it’s still pretty good but for me the absence of songs screamed out from every other scene.
That said, you won’t find the 104-minute running time dragging because it’s full of zip. The animation is so sophisticated every character really comes alive. Joy gets most of the ‘face time’ (as the Americans say) but Sadness is a more endearing character. The trick was to make her more than ‘sad’ – she’s also soft and empathetic.
A short film called Lava precedes Inside Out. Told in music (there we go again) it’s the story of a romance between – I kid you not – two volcanos. It only runs for a few minutes but it covers thousands of years. It will melt your heart. Who thinks these things up? Phenomenal.
****Very good