The last new movie I watched was Inside Out a couple of months ago. And I have to say, it is one of my favorite movies that I've seen in a long time.
Inside Out is the story of a girl name Riley, and the emotions inside her head. Riley moves from her childhood home in Minnesota to a big city in San Francisco, and her story is about dealing with that transition. Then the emotions in her head have to deal with Riley dealing with her big move. It sounds really dumb, and I admit, when I saw the trailer for the first time I thought this movie was going to be really bad. I've heard similar sentiments from others as well. But the actual product did not fail to deliver.
The first thing that I love about this movie is the characters. Every character was cast about as well as anyone could have imagined. The five emotions that are anthropomorphized are Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. Joy is played by Amy Poehler, and she destroyed it. I completely buy her as the embodiment of human happiness, and that cannot be easy to pull off. Sadness also was amazing, and maybe my favorite character, played by Phyllis Smith. Fear is played by Bill Hader, and Disgust by Mindy Kaling. And Anger was played by Lewis Black, who was just a perfect fit and now makes me wonder why he doesn't get more voiceover work.
The second thing I love about Inside Out is just how simple the plot of the movie is, both from Riley's perspective and from the perspective of the emotions. Riley's story arc is literally her just literally coming to terms with her moving away from home. That's it. No villains, no evil stepmother, no saving the world. Just a little girl dealing with life. It's so simple, yet so much more powerful and relatable than any usually Disney fairy tail.
And on the side of the emotions, while there is the journey of Sadness and Joy trying to make it back to HQ, the real journey is just one of acceptance. Joy has to come to accept the role that Sadness plays for Riley, even though it goes against Joy's very nature. And Sadness ultimately has to find her purpose, to help Riley deal with pain and struggles.
The third thing that I really like about the movie is the little touches of ingenuity that went into creating the world inside Riley's head. How the core memories define who she is, and these core memories forming the islands of her personality; how the memories change color depending on the defining emotion; how her mind is divided into sections like subconscious and abstract thought and imagination; to the train of thought that comes in; to the way the console interacts with the emotions. They're all magnificent little touches that really add to the depth of this movie.
The only real negative that I could bring against it if I were to really nitpick is that visually it's not super great. Riley's perspective doesn't lend itself to visuals and inside the mind there are very few shots that give you that sort of grand feeling like Wall-E or Up did. But it's not something you really notice or care about.
I love this movie. Five stars. 10/10. Just about whatever praise it receives, it deserves.