Inside Out
So I thought Inside Out was ... just okay.
Don't lynch me, I have reasons. :P
It's a great teaching movie, absolutely. I can see how it gives kids (and many adults) the concepts and vocabulary to express themselves and how they're feeling. It shows how different one's actions are when motivated by different emotions, and it's one of those rare movies that introduces Deep Concepts that aren't just an educational movie that nobody cares about.
But I don't think it was a great MOVIE. There was a lot of stuff in the middle that was basically ...
1) Joy attempts to bulldoze through things by sheer force of happiness
2) Sadness mopes around
3) Anger, Despair and Fear fuck things up in the control room, conveniently derailing the exact thing Joy and Sadness were trying to do, and they have to find another way.
... repeat ad infinitum until finally the pink elephant (whose name I can't remember, sorry pink elephant) has a problem Joy can't bulldoze through, and Sadness steps up to resolve it. Which would have still been a powerful scene without Island Blows Up x99999 before that, and perhaps even moreso, because by that point I was pretty much just like THANK FUCK THAT'S OVER.
And then the ending resolves Joy and Sadness's arc (with Joy relinquishing the core memories she's been desperately clinging to the entire time, and Sadness subsequently pulling Joy back up to the console after that) but not Riley's: we're told she's fine and she has new friends and she's on the hockey team again, but the only new core memory we see her create is hugging her parents. Which is wonderful! Show us more! I want to see her try out for hockey again, make new friends, read teenage vampire romance novels (*shudder*) ... but instead we're just told Everything Is Fine. Uh, thanks. Riley had too much airtime to be a side character, but the ending treats her like one. The pink elephant's arc had more of a resolution than hers did.
It had some great bits: I love the visual of how the parents' emotions are all kind of same-y with different colors (perhaps a sign of adulthood? The boy at the end had all his emotions in the same shape, too. Will Riley's emotions all end up looking like Joy as she grows?), the poor cat, and that thing with the helicopter pilot was great. COME FLY WITH ME.
Then again, I dunno, maybe all of this is like saying I don't like Transformers because it had too much giant robots fighting.
Don't lynch me, I have reasons. :P
It's a great teaching movie, absolutely. I can see how it gives kids (and many adults) the concepts and vocabulary to express themselves and how they're feeling. It shows how different one's actions are when motivated by different emotions, and it's one of those rare movies that introduces Deep Concepts that aren't just an educational movie that nobody cares about.
But I don't think it was a great MOVIE. There was a lot of stuff in the middle that was basically ...
1) Joy attempts to bulldoze through things by sheer force of happiness
2) Sadness mopes around
3) Anger, Despair and Fear fuck things up in the control room, conveniently derailing the exact thing Joy and Sadness were trying to do, and they have to find another way.
... repeat ad infinitum until finally the pink elephant (whose name I can't remember, sorry pink elephant) has a problem Joy can't bulldoze through, and Sadness steps up to resolve it. Which would have still been a powerful scene without Island Blows Up x99999 before that, and perhaps even moreso, because by that point I was pretty much just like THANK FUCK THAT'S OVER.
And then the ending resolves Joy and Sadness's arc (with Joy relinquishing the core memories she's been desperately clinging to the entire time, and Sadness subsequently pulling Joy back up to the console after that) but not Riley's: we're told she's fine and she has new friends and she's on the hockey team again, but the only new core memory we see her create is hugging her parents. Which is wonderful! Show us more! I want to see her try out for hockey again, make new friends, read teenage vampire romance novels (*shudder*) ... but instead we're just told Everything Is Fine. Uh, thanks. Riley had too much airtime to be a side character, but the ending treats her like one. The pink elephant's arc had more of a resolution than hers did.
It had some great bits: I love the visual of how the parents' emotions are all kind of same-y with different colors (perhaps a sign of adulthood? The boy at the end had all his emotions in the same shape, too. Will Riley's emotions all end up looking like Joy as she grows?), the poor cat, and that thing with the helicopter pilot was great. COME FLY WITH ME.
Then again, I dunno, maybe all of this is like saying I don't like Transformers because it had too much giant robots fighting.