Inside Out (Pixar)

Easily the best Pixar film since Toy Story 3. It's a great film, but - and this is testament to the studio's overall quality more than anything else - I'm not sure what level of greatness that is :pac:

It's a brilliant, accessible concept brought to life with clarity and energy. Pixar films have always worn their emotions on their sleeve, so it's incredibly fitting that they've literalised it. There is lots of giddy visual playfulness, including probably the most surprising and delightful stylistic tangent in their studio's history (y'know the one when you see it!). It take a universal coming of age story and dives deep into its prime emotional beats to make it seem both fresh and lovingly familiar at the same time. It's easily digestable for all ages without foregoing all depth or subtlety (while a lot of stuff is spelled out, happily just as much isn't). It manages to take complex concepts and make them as accessible and cinematic as one could imagine - simplifying them in some cases, but surprisingly not in others. It has great gags, both once-offs and running ones, that fit perfectly with the overall concepts (bar a jarringly clunky Chinatown reference). Michael Giacchino scores it all with a lively, impressive soundtrack that nonetheless doesn't lazily prop up with a story quite high on the sentimentality already.

I'm struggling to articulate why, despite all that loveliness, there was a tiny little something missing. While the middle section of the film features lots of wonderful sections, it also feels like a lot of good ideas in search of a more coherent implementation. It feels like a lot of neat standalone setpieces, as opposed to one single journey. Docter and his team compartmentalise a lot of ideas without letting them mix with each other, perhaps. And while the ideas are reliably imaginative, some of them are more effectively implemented than others. Also: it's easily excused given the very idea of the film, some of the heartstring tugging is as blatant as can be - again, pretty much an inevitable observation when one of the characters is called Sadness!

But then towards the ending particularly it's clear this is a film comfortable with a range of emotions, so despite the sentimentality the very story reflects that something can be joyous and sad and infuriating and more (much more) at the very same time. And there's no doubting it's a joy to watch (Joy is also a joy, one of the most likable of all Pixar protagonists). It is a film that is simple enough for the youngest child to enjoy and offers enough complexity to surprise their parents. It takes the most basic of human emotions and reflects on their glorious messiness. And it manages to fit in a scene that visualises the , where if you only saw the screen for those few minutes you'd be forgiven for thinking you're watching some sort of weird art film. After a few iffy Pixar sequels, all is right in the world again.