Review: Inside Out (2D)

Pixar elite director Pete Doctor returns with another colourful yet human experience with Inside Out.

Riley, a young eleven year old girl, experiences the hardships of moving house with her parents, her emotions are running riot inside her mind. Literally. Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust are all present and failing to cope, especially when Joy is lost.

Inside Out is an incredible stand out experience in Pixar's library, there isn't anything quite like this which may prove it to be divisive among the general public. Pixar have always held "family friendly" as keystone of their productions, catering to both adults and children.
Despite what critics have said already, I think Inside Out is angled far more towards teenagers and adults.

The film is dealing with mental states, neuroses and the building blocks of youthful experiences that can shape who we grow up to become. That's some heavy and frankly endless material right there! Couple that with a (mostly) fully realised fantasy organisation within all of our characters' heads and the characters there too! Come to think about it... an hour and a half seems too short.
The trailer gave little away, so I didn't know what to expect, but I felt somewhat short-changed in the delivery of these concepts. The film barrels along, often at breakneck speeds to keep children entertained, while throwing great jokes and awesome visual metaphor left and right, but I wish there had been more attention given to some aspects.
Example: Riley is young, her emotions (and by extension; the characters in her mind) are young and inexperienced, so they are prone to becoming frantic and don't even know how their own surroundings work. We as the audience therefore don't know how it works either. This is great as far as the concept is concerned, but I would have liked some comparison with mature minds (such as her parents - who's emotions are barely featured beyond what was seen in the trailer!) to show us why everything is so fraught all the time, like a sixth character for maturity or restraint.

There isn't much attention given to the human characters either; Riley and her Dad have bare bones of character given while Riley's Mum has absolutely no development at all! Asides the memory of a hunky helicopter pilot, that is.

It is an extremely ambitious project to be sure, especially to cater for both young and old. Pixar deliver gorgeous visuals and top quality animation, even the soundtrack stood out to me, and though these are a given nowadays they shouldn't be ignored. 
It really sounds like I found a lot to dislike about the film, but in all honest it is worth a watch! It has a unique and challenging premise for a family film and had me laughing throughout as well as feel a lot of familiarity with the story. 
(Sure, I may have shed a tear somewhere too) 
With the simplicity of the film but the complexity of the subject matter, I just found a lot to nitpick.

Inside Out is a great film, perhaps more angled towards older audiences who will pick up every joke and reference (and there's a lot of them!) but I am not sure I would ever own it in my collection.

Additional Marshmallows: Is it wrong that I found the character of Joy intensely annoying? 

Review: Monsters University

Monsters University provides fun and some unexpected moments, but it doesn't feel like one Pixar's best, more like one of their safer bets.

As the animation studio's first prequel, the film goes back to see the humble beginnings of Mike and Sully's friendship from 2001's Monsters Inc. (yes, it was twelve years ago) as they go to college and learn to be "Scarers". But while Mike knows all there is to know about scares in theory... he isn't intimidating enough. Or is he?

The film's very simple premise is "High School for monsters". We haven't seen much of the Monsters world until now, but it appears to be little more than a replica of our own (buses, cars, schools, grades, etc) and so there isn't much to go with asides our two heroes and how their rivalry becomes a strong friendship. This is somewhat obvious... given the natural curse of a prequel; you know how it ultimately turns out.

The film's structure is simplistic too, our leads go through the familiar trappings of college life, interspersed with montage sequences. Looking at it with less critical eyes, these scenes are very funny; a slew of antics and bit-characters that could have worked as singular shorts. They are very funny moments, but narrative progression feels more like part-of-the-course rather than involving the audience.

There are two things I do give this film though, one being Helen Mirren's character of Dame Hardscrabble, who positively steals the show, all of the show, and proved to me that Pixar can make these monsters actually scary looking for once (really, look at them, they are mostly just amorphous blobs). The other thing is the film's final act and how it doesn't give our heroes the easiest of times. There is still a fraction of Pixar's daring, unconventional streak here.

Oh, and the librarian, she was awesome too.

It is hard to pin down but for a Pixar film, it feels too safe, too conventional. It didn't draw me in nor push me away, but given nearly all of Pixar films have completely arrested me emotionally, there was very little of that here. This is most likely down to its decision to restrain itself into a very formulaic High School structure.

That all said, it is fun and will entertain the kids for just under two hours. Probably good to marathon with Monsters Inc (that's obvious, but as a prequel it does work well)

Ahh! That dude's voice was Nathan Fillion! I knew I recognised it!

Review: Brave

Brave is probably one of the simpler outings from Pixar, but it is very easy on the eyes and strikes a nice balance of fun and maturity.

Merida is a Scottish princess whose wild, playful, adventurous nature is completely smothered with her mother's idea of what a princess should be. When their strife gets the better of them, Merida seeks aid from a mysterious old woman living in the forest to "change her mother" and settle the argument.

Bar one exception (cough, Cars 2) Pixar is one studio that consistently excels both in storytelling and visual flare, and one can easily set the bar far higher when judging their products and root out any flaws... Brave is a simple tale compared to the other more "sprawling" stories, and feels like a short hundred minutes, but it makes up for this with having a big heart, immensely likeable characters, beautiful animation and a surprisingly dark, sometimes sinister tone.

That's right, there's a lot of mystery and magic in Brave's story (and in its PR; seriously I knew very little going into it) and some of the younger audience, especially the very little, might find it scary and confusing in an emotional manner. While it isn't as heart-wrenching as UP, its emotional strife is more around family, family conflict and misunderstanding. It is a great twist on what could have been another Disney princess story.

That's all the adult stuff, there is plenty for the kids too! While Brave has some terrific scares, it has some good slapstick fights and chase scenes that don't feel as abrasive as UP's. Merida's three younger brothers are a hoot, and frankly all of the characters are instantly likeable. Yes, the Scottish accents are insanely thick (sometimes deliberately undecipherable!) but as a Scot, I wasn't offended, in fact I was impressed with the vocabulary that Pixar was dishing out. It gave the film a happy-go-lucky, heart-over-mind charm.

Overall, if you don't expect too much, Brave is an excellent family animation with "family" at its core. Simple, but has something for everyone.

Additional Marshmallows: It should be added; this is very much Merida's story, there's no love story crammed in, no charming prince, which was refreshing!

Review: Cars 2

Oh dear... I mean, oh dear... Let's get this review out of the way.

I quite enjoyed the first Cars film, in fact I have it on DVD, it was a heart warming story about what's important in life (and not simply winning) and had likeable, quirky characters, a beginning, middle and end. Cars 2... has none of these.
Mater the tow truck is invited to aid racecar Lightning McQueen as he takes part in the World Grand Prix, but upon making a fool of himself Mater is shunned, only to be mistaken as an undercover spy by two covert agents working to reveal a diabolical fuel conspiracy.
Need I say more?
I had hopes, with John Turturro, Eddie Izzard and Michael Caine supplying new voices (and they certainly do their best) but what I got was a messy and divided movie that shuns virtually ALL of the original quirky cast and replaces them with underdeveloped spy movie stereotypes. Plus Mater. Mater who has apparently broken the bonds of quirkiness to become downright aggravating to almost Jar Jar levels.
Not to mention the two professional spies couldn't tell Mater wasn't a spy, somehow his bumbling idiocy was mistaken for just really good acting. Yeeeeah. I know it is a kids movie, a cartoon, but there were so many plot inconsistencies and vapid humour here; Pixar has shown time and time again that they can marry both childhood fantasy and mature storytelling, but not here.
It seems unfair to slam Pixar as soon as they drop the ball, but it is so blatantly obvious here; none of it feels clever, the only bit I liked was the brief shot of little biplane pigeons at the French Grand Prix. That made me chuckle.


It had no purpose, the Cars universe was probably the last of Pixar's creations in need of expanding. The nice "Radiator Springs" characters are ignored completely, the plot is stupid, and there was no message or morality suitable for a Pixar feature film (or even a Saturday morning cartoon). It's just a big marketing scheme to sell lots of toys.