Inside Out has proved a critical and now commercial success for Pixar once again, and it has left many looking back to the company as a source for creative films that work for both kids and adults. With an all-star cast of characters who are emotions and the voices, there is a lot of be seen an Inside Out Review.
Inside Out lives up to its name as most of the action takes place inside and outside a girl named Riley. On the outside, Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) is a Midwest girl who is uprooted when her family moves to San Francisco, and the audience gets to peer inside Riley's mental processes on the inside. In here we get to see Riley's emotions personified like Joy (played by Parks and Recreation's very upbeat and well-cast Amy Poehler), Sadness (played by Phyllis Smith who played the melancholy Phyllis on The Office), Fear (played by twitchy SNL alumni and Bill Hader), Anger (played appropriately by upset comedian Lewis Black), and Disgust (played by Mindy Kaling of The Office and The Mindy Project).
As Riley goes through some trials on the outside, her sub-conscious also goes through some serious adventures as well. This leads Riley's emotions on an internal and external journey, where they meet Riley's imaginary friend Bing Bong, a purple elephant creature voiced by Richard Kind. Joy and Bing Bong fall into the Memory Dump, where memories disappear forever.
Richard Kind revealed on Yahoo Movies how difficult it was to play this scene as he has to utter lines about how hopeless the situation is. In several takes, Richard Kind would be bawling from his line reading, and some of the dialogue was actually cut from the final take. Still, the scene is pretty emotional, which is something that Pixar films are known for the past twenty years since the original Toy Story was released into theaters.
Inside Out has received some incredible reviews with an average of 8.8 on imdb, a 93 percent on Metacritic, and a 98 on Rotten Tomatoes. It is possible that Inside Out may spark a "Pixar Renaissance". After all, there was a time when Disney animated movies were in a slump, not having near the draw that they used to. Then, in 1989, they released The Little Mermaid, and suddenly, the Disney animated films became back in style with hits like Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King.
Pixar has recently had a troubled history as their latest offerings have not been the landmarks that they used to be. In a way, Pixar is a victim of its own success, as recent sequels such as Cars 2 and Monsters University were not received well. Pixar's last completely original film story was Brave, but it fit in with the traditional Disney princess mold. Inside Out has shown that Pixar still has what it takes, and can deliver some of the best computer animated works even with competition coming from Dreamworks, Sony, Universal, and even Disney's computer animated division.
So will Inside Out be the beginning of a new fresh direction for Pixar, yet still keeping the originality of what made it great in the first place? Only time will tell, but the dealbreaker could be the next computer animated film with The Good Dinosaur, coming on November 25, 2015.
