From what I had heard, this movie was not a typical Disney-Pixar movie.
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However, Docter denies that Inside Out is Pixar “doing” psychotherapy for children – or for adults, who, he believes, could benefit just as much from the film. (If you fancy an additional larf, Google those mad, monomaniacal Christian movie review websites to savour their disapproval of the film’s spiritual shortcomings.) Within seconds, Joy is joined by other key emotions: glum Sadness (Smith), snarky Disgust (Kaling), cowering Fear (Hader) and short-fused Anger (Black).
After moving to San Fransisco from Minnesota, the emotions need to work together to ensure Riley stays the positive, happy girl she’s always been. Indeed, at times I was transported back to my childhood.
During the movie, Joy and Sadness get lost inside the brain away from headquarters.
Amy Poehler at a screening of new film Inside Out at the Odeon Cinema, London. And what’s not to love about a film with an amusing déjà vu gag, a cynical dream production studio that goes heavy on the reality distortion filter, and a climax that features a tower of self-sacrificing imaginary boyfriends? Picture credit should read: Ian West/PA Photos.
“‘Inside Out”, the new Pixar-Disney animation destined to be a classic, charts the emotional journey of 11-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias). With Disgust, Anger and Fear left in charge, how will Riley cope on her first day of school, and how will she settle into her new surroundings?
Poehler – whose blonde locks are now a warm auburn – has form in playing it perky as the ultra-cheerful bureaucrat Leslie Knope in Parks And Recreation, for which she recently received her sixth Primetime Emmy nomination.
The audience will enjoy how the emotions interact and affect what Riley does. In between the intricate rules laid out in the screenplay for this life of the mind, and the frantic adventures on which Joy and Sadness embark, there isn’t much space for contemplation, serenity, even boredom.
Due to a freak accident Joy and Sadness are sucked outside of the command centre whilst holding on to some core memories and they must find their way back to Headquarters to restore Riley’s happy memories before it’s too late.
Poehler adds: “There’s a great scene in the film where Joy has to relent and let Sadness take over”. You get the feeling that the Pixar team is a bit scared about the idea of making a sequel.
“Inside Out” had been in the works for several years, and it’s possible Pixar was heavily inspired by a 2010 manga called “Nonai Poison Berry” (“Poison Berry in My Brain”) by Setona Mizushiro, the film adaptation of which came out in May. Any and all efforts to cheer her up in the interim only caused her to lash out, whereas she would have been perfectly fine until dinner if we had let her be.
“No one can do what she did better than she did it”. “I think a lot of parents ask that question”.
Giving feelings their own personalities has changed Amy’s outlook on emotions.
“As a woman, you think about this magic hour when you were 11, where puberty hasn’t ruined everything yet and you really do have the whole world in front of you, hopefully”, says the star, who also runs a website, Smart Girls, encouraging young people to celebrate intelligence and imagination above “fitting in”. The climactic revelation, radical within the context of a Hollywood movie, that unhappiness is a vital and valid emotion, is dispensed with swiftly in the race towards an upbeat ending. Was the movie trying to tell us that we are truly incapable of both controlling and responding to our emotions?
“The film is filled with action and rough and tumble, sucking up tubes and things falling down and breaking, and Anger blowing his top, so they love all that stuff”. The way someone is acting often isn’t the way they’re feeling. “It’s been a way of discussing emotions and feelings with them in a way they like, that’s fun and feels safe”.
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Of her comedy influences, she says: “Growing up in the States in the Nineties, we could only pass British comedy around like it was a secret”.
