Contains Spoilers for Inside Out
Every once in a while, my family has a Christmas gift labeled "For Everyone", and it usually means a game that everybody wants, a rare occurrence now that my older sister isn't very interested in some of the games my brother and I want, or a movie. This year, it happened to be Inside Out on Blu Ray. I wasn't expecting to like it that much, but since I was already loaded with the entirety of K-On and Psycho Pass, I was set anyways. I guess I was surprised by how funny the movie is, because I'd honestly recommend it solely on the comedy, but I was right about my suspicions. It was narratively weak, with a decent framework but painfully empty execution. I think it's a prime example of the problem I have with Pixar's writing nowadays.
Within the first few minutes of the movie, I already knew what the entire thing was going to build up to. I knew the moment Joy said that she didn't know why Sadness was there. The moral would be that Sadness was useful because it is important for people to become happy, and that shallow happiness isn't a realistic way of living. I was right, by the way, and to get from the beginning there, I had to sit through an hour and a half of Joy being painfully optimistic, to the point where she was just unlikable for most of the movie. Even Sadness starts to believe that she's a problem, which feels really forced, especially because it's right after she helped Bing Bong feel better and proved that she was more helpful than Joy in that situation.
Sadly, this small bit of compassion is from a trailer and Joy is not at all that helpful.
There are a lot of other problems I foresaw before the movie came out, such as the lack of character complexity. Of course, Anger and Disgust are one-note characters that are entirely uninteresting. Contrary to popular opinion, I find Fear a bit likable because of his orderly fashion contrasting his habit to freak out over everything, but he's being compared against some very shallow characters, so it's not saying that much. Sadness spends most of her time trying to help but being told not to by Joy, and Joy spends a lot of time telling Sadness not to do anything while she fails at nearly everything. Riley has zero character, and only does what the five uninteresting characters decide.
In fact, it's not even just as simple as that. There are moments where Riley acts entirely unreasonably because the emotions themselves lack enough nuance. Other times, Riley actually acts like a human being and it doesn't really make sense with the logic the movie is built off of. The islands of personality all fall apart the moment Riley does one thing in opposition to them, which theoretically means that personalities are fragile and doing one thing in contrast to a trait means that the trait won't exist anymore.
In fact, it's not even just as simple as that. There are moments where Riley acts entirely unreasonably because the emotions themselves lack enough nuance. Other times, Riley actually acts like a human being and it doesn't really make sense with the logic the movie is built off of. The islands of personality all fall apart the moment Riley does one thing in opposition to them, which theoretically means that personalities are fragile and doing one thing in contrast to a trait means that the trait won't exist anymore.
Another Pixar movie infamous for similar failings, although a much less funny one.
The movie does a decent enough job in terms of making emotional scenes work, and it utilizes the fact that it's a film well. However, this is pretty standard for a film company who made the first feature length computer generated movie ever. I think it's shows a big problem I've had with Pixar throughout the current decade. This is the company famous for Toy Story, Finding Nemo, and other classic movies, regarded very highly by critics and average moviegoers alike. Name your favorite Pixar movie. Chances are, it's from before 2010.
Lately, Pixar hasn't been at the top of their game, with Cars 2 and Brave being considered by many as their biggest flops ever. The truly amazing movies, at least coming from me who has missed a few since, stopped at Up. Their movies aren't bad, but they're hardly of the quality Pixar has come to be known by. They don't have those great writers anymore, and I haven't seen a single movie from them that hasn't had a hamfisted, shallow attempt of a strong narrative since the good ol' '00s. I can't help but feel that people's strong connection with this studio, evident from this movie's critical acclaim, come from its past, and not strength of their newer works. Don't get me wrong, Inside Out is hardly a bad movie, but with a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, I just don't see all this praise justified.
Lately, Pixar hasn't been at the top of their game, with Cars 2 and Brave being considered by many as their biggest flops ever. The truly amazing movies, at least coming from me who has missed a few since, stopped at Up. Their movies aren't bad, but they're hardly of the quality Pixar has come to be known by. They don't have those great writers anymore, and I haven't seen a single movie from them that hasn't had a hamfisted, shallow attempt of a strong narrative since the good ol' '00s. I can't help but feel that people's strong connection with this studio, evident from this movie's critical acclaim, come from its past, and not strength of their newer works. Don't get me wrong, Inside Out is hardly a bad movie, but with a 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, I just don't see all this praise justified.
But hey, Disgust is a waifu-tier character if I've ever seen one.
What do you guys think? Is the movie not worth this constant praise? Or is my pretentiousness showing again? All the power to you, really. After all, this is just my opinion, which is just as valuable or worthless, however you look at it, as anybody else's. Anyways, I'll continue to complain about others' judgements in the meantime, so this is your captain, signing off.