Inside Out (2015) Review

Inside Out (2015) Review

Inside Out is an animated comedy film made by Pixar Animation Studios. The movie is directed by Pete Doctor, who is one of my now favorite animated movie directors along with Brad Bird. He has made Monsters Inc. (not Monsters University), Up, and Inside Out. These movies are considered three of Pixar's best movies. He has also wrote the story for Wall-E, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. So, what is this movie about?

This movie is about a really young girl named Riley born in Minnesota. She has these humanized emotions inside their heads, in fact, everyone has these little personified emotions, usually consisting of Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. To explain how this whole concept works, the emotions develop over time. It's not like they poof out of nowhere instantly as she's born. When Riley was born, Joy came first. Then Sadness. Then Fear. Then Disgust. Then Anger. So, the conflict with this film is that she moves from Minnesota, her beloved hometown to San Francisco and this traumatizes her and then stuff literally goes wrong. So, Sadness and Joy end up getting stuck outside of their "headquarters" where they control Riley's emotions, and they have to find a way back. That's the basic premise of the story. 

I had high hopes for this movie, mainly because Pete Doctor was directing this film. Any movie with his name as the director on it literally makes me want to go see it. Plus, I was interested in the concept. I don't believe that this idea that emotions are personified is as original as people are making it out to be. I've seen this concept somewhere before. But, at least, the movie takes a fresh and new take, instead of doing some sequel or spin-off that nobody asked for. I wanted this movie to be great and guess what? IT WAS! 

Good Things About the Movie

1. Awesome animation work by Pixar as always. The movie is beautifully animated as we expect from Pixar. 

2. This movie made me have the feels. Okay, I'll admit. I cried during the movie at least once.

3. This movie serves as a comeback for Pixar. I don't want to say that Pixar's recent movies prior to Inside Out sucked, but they haven't been living up to the levels that we expect from a Pixar film. Cars 2, Brave, and Monsters University were movies I felt didn't live up to their predecessors. The last great Pixar movie before Inside Out was probably Toy Story 3 back in 2010, which was exactly 5 years and 1 day ago (June 18, 2010). If today was June 18, that would have been awesome. But, that's just my opinion. I hope that Pixar continues to deliver amazing movies like this in the future.

4. I like how the movie connects the worlds of the emotions and the real world together. Because of Doctor's amazing direction, I love how the movie simulates a traumatizing event in real life to an animation film.

5. This movie is perfect for all ages alike. Kids, teens, adults, it doesn't matter. People of all ages can see this movie and they must see this movie. Sure, the movie has a bunch of kiddy moments that will make you roll your eyes because it's childish, but I can't really penalize the movie for that because this is a movie marketing towards kids. But, I appreciate the fact that the movie has some implies some mature themes in the movie that does cater a little bit to the older audience, and that's a thing I like about Pete Doctor's movies. He likes to turn things that seem childish and foolish and gives a deeper meaning to them. 

Bad Things About the Movie

1. Pretty much none. I can't really think of any negatives that really impacted my movie experience, except the kids that were a little annoying in the theater. But, one, that's not the movie's fault. Two, I'm in a kid's movie....so. It seems that you have to try really hard to find a negative in the movie. I mean, I can think of some little bitty negatives in the movie, but they would just be little nitpicks, instead of actual flaws. Like I can point out: why did they only have 5 emotions in the movie? Don't humans have emotions more than that like Shyness, Hurt, Hope, Distrust, Desire, Embarassment, Grief, Boredom, etc. But, that's just a little nitpick.

Verdict & Conclusion

This movie is, in my opinion, a near masterpiece. I say "near masterpiece" because this movie isn't as great as Wall-E, The Incredibles, Toy Story, the original Monsters Inc. in my opinion. But, I still think that this movie will be remembered as Pixar's great movies and it's up there with the other Pixar movies I just mentioned. I can just imagine 10 years from now if we tried to remember the best Pixar movies, I can see Inside Out being one of those movies.  

Score: 9.2/10