Review: "Inside Out"

Up until 2009, Pixar was where you went in Hollywood for original filmmaking. The fact that their movies were animated was merely a byproduct. The studio with the freshest ideas and the most novel concepts churned out great, inventive films one after another: “Finding Nemo,” “The Incredibles,” “Cars,” “Ratatouille,” “Wall·E,” “Up.”

These films were superlative not just because they told terrific stories and featured characters who mattered to us, but because they were unlike anything we’d ever seen before.

Then a curious thing happened. Almost overnight, Pixar stories became derivative – stale, even.

We got three sequels which, even when exquisitely well-made like “Toy Story 3,” lacked the vitality of the originals. “Brave” seemed like a self-conscious rebuttal to the Disney princess tradition, and as such felt more about the things it was not than the things it was. (Not to mention, it essentially stole the plot of another Disney animated flick, 2003’s “Brother Bear.”)

Suddenly, Pixar movies seemed less like ingenuity and more a commodity.

I’m happy to report the latest, “Inside Out,” is a return to form. It’s hardly among the top tier of Pixar movies, but it’s dizzy with wondrous ideas, interesting things to see and places we’d like to visit.

It all takes place inside the head of one kid, Riley (voice by Kaitlyn Dias). The idea is that a person’s personality is ruled by five emotions: joy, sadness, fear, anger and disgust. Each is represented by little cartoon entities, who collaborate and clash with each other and this in turn governs how the person behaves.

They sit in an isolated central headquarters in the mind, watching a TV screen and seeing the world as their person does. Experiences are recorded as memories, which are glass-like orbs, which the emotions help collate, store and recall. The most vital memories form the core of the person’s being.

It’s a rather cerebral concept, but one that small children can take to easily. (My 4- and almost-2-year-olds sat rapt the entire time.) It helps that the emotions each have distinct identities themselves.

Joy (the irrepressible Amy Poehler), a pixie-like waif, is the dominant emotion for Riley, acting as major domo and subtly ordering the others around. Anger (Lewis Black) is a little red rager who literally blows his top with fire. Disgust (Mindy Kaling) is both protective and disdainful, and Fear (Bill Hader) is the kvetching voice of caution.

Then there’s Sadness, terrifically voiced by (Phyllis Smith), who played a somewhat similar character on TV’s “The Office.” A purple nerdy type, Sadness can’t seem to summon much enthusiasm for anything, mostly likes to just lie around and complain, and has the nasty habit of touching the memory orbs and infecting them with her mope.

“Crying helps me slow down and obsess over the weight of life’s problems,” Sadness drones.

But Riley’s parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) move the family from Minnesota to San Francisco, and their daughter struggles to fit in. Joy heroically tries to enforce happiness, but this only makes things worse. Then through a series of events, she and Sadness get exiled to the hinterlands of Riley’s subconscious, leaving the three remaining emotions to deal.

I enjoyed the filmmakers’ elegant depiction of Riley’s mind – and those of others, for we get to go inside the heads of other humans, too, where the same five emotions exist in different iterations. Director Pete Docter (“Up”) co-wrote the script with Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley. Ronaldo Del Carmel is credited as co-director.

Along their journey to try to get back to HQ, Joy and Sadness have various sorts of adventures, wandering through Riley’s dreams and finding out what happens to faded memories – even an old imaginary friend from Riley’s toddlerhood, Bing Bong, vividly voiced by Richard Kind. We learn that each emotion exists for an important reason, even if it isn’t instantly obvious.

“Inside Out” is a fun, colorful movie that also offers a little insight into each of us might tick. Pixar has got their mojo back.

Review: "Obvious Child"

There's a new style of serio-comic storytelling centered around the disheveled lives of twentysomething New York City women. Movies like "Frances Ha" and "Obvious Child," and the HBO show "Girls," revel in the wretched squalor of their stunted careers and the hapless hopelessness of their romantic entanglements.

The fact that these tales usually feature female directors and/or writers only adds to their sense of neurotic authenticity. As is also common with young women singer/songwriters these days, they make use of their messy real lives as fodder for creativity.

I was underwhelmed by "Girls" and "Frances Ha," but "Obvious Child" is the charming best of the lot, mostly due to the vibrant presence of Jenny Slate. You may know her from being on "Saturday Night Live" for about a minute and a half, and punch-funny turns on TV shows like "Parks and Recreation."

But for most people she's a new face and voice, and my guess is it's one they'll want to see more of. She's pitiable and yet admirable, a born screw-up who we end up rooting for.

She plays Donna Stern, a not-much disguised version of her younger status as a rising stand-up comedienne. By day she works/sleeps in the tiny Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Book Store -- "it's a Manhattan institution," she insists -- and at night plows through drinks and stage sets with her fellow workaday comics.

Her shtick is embarrassingly honest appraisals of her own life, including the opening monologue where describes the spectacularly drone-like sex she has with her current boyfriend -- who happens to be in the audience, and she knows it. He promptly dumps her, and Donna quickly rebounds with an impossibly WASP-y fellow named Max (Jake Lacy) she drunkenly picks up at the bar.

If you've heard anything about "Obvious Child," it's probably in some vague terms about it being an "abortion comedy." This is true, and also not. It's accurate that Donna gets pregnant from her one night stand and speedily decides that she's not ready to be a mother. She schedules an abortion at the earliest convenience, which happens to be Valentine's Day.

Needless to say, this is not a plot designed to elicit warm feelings from the right-to-life crowd.
"You're going to kill it," her best pal Nellie (Gaby Hoffman) offers as encouragement as Donna prepares to do a set the night before the procedure. "Tomorrow I am!" she responds chirpily.

But I don't get the sense writer/director Gillian Robespierre set out to antagonize anyone, and certainly doesn't foist any lectures about 'my body, my choices.' Rather, it's an honest, funny and brave portrait of a young woman trying to navigate her way through life, and often hitting the icebergs. This is Robespierre's first feature film, based on a short movie she made a few years ago with a different cast.

Slate and Lacy have real sparks between them, a magical coupling between the loudmouthed Jewess and the uptight New Englander. They each represent something exotic to the other, and despite the strained circumstances of their situation -- she doesn't share the news with him at first -- they manage some genuine romance, or at least the modern facsimile of it.

A montage dance scene set to the Paul Simon song that gives the film its title is carefree and breathtakingly sexy, despite the fact it doesn't really show much flesh.

The film has a few other drop-in performances from more recognizable actors -- Polly Draper and Richard Kind play Donna's parents, who each love her in their own way, and David Cross turns up as a more successful comedian.

But it's Jenny Slate who gives "Obvious Child" its heart and soul, a silly but satisfying heroine for this day and age.

Catching up with "A Serious Man"

So I've got a free weekend and I'm trying to catch up on some movies I missed, starting with "A Serious Man." I knew I had to see it at some point, because I simply must experience all things Coen Bros.

The "Variety" critic aptly described this as the sort of movie you get to make after you've won an Oscar. It's a loose retelling of the Book of Job, recast to the Midwest of the 1960s and with a distinctly Jewish point of few, starring a bunch of unknowns. It's a contemplative tale, darkly humorous and often vexing.

The protagonist is Larry Gropnik (Michael Stuhlbarg), a youngish physics professor who's awaiting a chance for tenure when his whole life falls apart, bit by bit. One day his wife Judith (Sari Lennick) announces that she wants a divorce, and that she's in love with Sy Ableman (Fred Melamed, who has a voice like gold dipped in honey).

On top of that, his brother Arthur (Richard Kind, the only recognizable actor in the film) is crashing with them, spending his days nursing a nasty cyst in their bathroom and his nights using his math skills to win at gambling. Larry's daughter seems to care only about the state of her hair, and son Danny is about to have his bar mitzvah, in between pining for his transistor radio confiscated by the school principal, smoking dope and running from a bully whom he owes money for said dope.

And more: A Korean student who is failing Larry's class attempts to bribe him for a passing grade; his unbalanced neighbor is encroaching on his property line; the neighbor's wife is sunbathing nude; he can't get in to see the good elderly rabbi, only the unhelpful other two; and someone is sending anonymous letters to the tenure committee, urging his rejection.

The story of Job, for whose who don't know or remember, is about a man whom God punishes with all sorts of ill happenings and temptations to see if he will falter in his faith. With Larry, we're never really sure if it's his faith that's motivating him or just a generic desire to be a mensch, aka a good and serious man.

I generally enjoyed the movie, although Larry is such nudgenick, a man so utterly passive and unable to stand up for himself, that his act wears thin very soon. After an hour or so of nervous stuttering, sweaty lips and quavering questions, we're ready for Larry to grow a pair and take action -- for good or ill, but at least moving in some direction.

I get the sense that "A Serious Man" is a very personal film for Joel and Ethan Coen, and that they're using it to work out some of thoughts about their Jewish faith. That's well and good, but it also makes for a movie that never invites you in.

3 stars