Flashback: the original Inside Out (2015)
Nine years ago, the film felt like a return to form – and formula – for an increasingly sequel-driven Pixar. And now it has a sequel of its own.
Inside Out 2 scored one of the biggest opening weekends of all time this week. I thought it might be fun to take a look at what I had to say about the original film when it came out nine years ago. The original version of this review is still available at the (increasingly ad-heavy) website where I first posted it. The ad-free version below is a bonus for my paid subscribers.
Review: Inside Out (dir. Pete Docter, 2015) marks a return to form — and formula — for sequel-driven Pixar
The last few years have been kind of dispiriting for old-time Pixar fans (i.e. people like me who remember seeing Tin Toy at animation festivals before it became the first computer-animated film to win the Oscar for best animated short).
The studio, which was pushing in ever stranger and more adventurous directions prior to its purchase by the Disney corporation a decade ago, had lost some of its mojo since then, as it cranked out unnecessary sequels — one good (Toy Story 3), one bad (Cars 2), and one that was at least okay (Monsters University) — plus one “original” film, the reputation of which was tarnished when the studio took it away from the woman who created it and handed it over to one of her male colleagues (Brave).
Not to put too fine a point on it, but the studio, once praised as a bastion of creativity and artistic freedom, has been stuck in a rut these last few years.
Thankfully, Inside Out — directed by Pete Docter, of Monsters, Inc. fame — represents a return to form, which is both a plus and a… well, not a minus, exactly, but here’s what I mean: The film is an “original” story, completed by the filmmaker who conceptualized it in the first place, and thus represents the purest expression of what Pixar represents for many people since Docter’s last film, Up. But in some ways, it feels very much like a throwback to the Toy Story movies that got Pixar started as a feature-film studio in the first place. It’s a new story, but not that new.
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