→ June 22, 2015
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Inside Out.

Pixar’s latest movie, Inside Out, lived up to all of the hype and praise it’s received so far, a visually stunning film that hits all of the bittersweet notes that have made Pixar’s best films – especially WALL-E and the Toy Story trilogy – masterpieces not just of animation but of cinema. It’s also, in many ways, one of Pixar’s riskiest ideas, thanks to one of its least conventional plots yet, making the ultimate success of the film even more remarkable. (Full, if obvious, disclosure: Disney owns Pixar and ESPN.)

Inside Out is a metaphysical coming-of-age story that manages to encapsulate a buddy comedy, a psychological thriller, and an Arthur Clarke-style sci-fi story all set inside of the head of eleven-year-old Riley Anderson, whose family has just removed her from her idyllic life in Minnesota so her father can work for a startup in San Francisco. Riley’s personality is determined by a pastel-colored world run primarily by five emotions: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear, each voiced and drawn in distinctive fashion (and helpfully color-coded). Riley’s memories each bear one of those five colors, although we learn early on that Sadness (Phyllis Smith) can turn any memory blue (her color) with a touch, a sort of King Midas meets The Old Guitarist-era Picasso. When Joy and Sadness are inadvertently tossed from Headquarters, where the five emotions live and work, along with Riley’s core memories, her whole personality starts to crumble into depression and negativity. Joy and Sadness have to try to find their way back from the archives of Long-Term Memory while the other three emotions try without success to steer the ship.

The five emotionsJoy, voiced by Amy Poehler, is in essence a yellow-skinned, blue-haired, fuzzy Leslie Knope, full of enthusiasm and as much of a leader as the quintet of emotions can have; she was there first, Sadness second, and there’s an uneasy (but not antagonistic) relationship between the two. Their pairing in exile isn’t an accidental bit of plotting, as the film needs the two to play off of each other, even when they run into Riley’s largely-forgotten imaginary friend Bing Bong (Richard Kind) and end up in a series of misadventures as they try to get back to headquarters. (My favorite: their trip through abstract thought, where the three are transformed into cubist images, then deconstructed.) Some of the resolutions are a little obvious – Pixar writers have always taken the maxim of Chekhov’s gun very seriously – but the three writers do an excellent job of managing three disparate plot strands: the Joy/Sadness journey, the three knuckleheads still in HQ, and Riley’s real-world interactions with her befuddled (but never distant or cliched) parents.

The Joy/Sadness adventure – and that’s what it is, a buddy comedy with serious consequences for the other storylines – is the primary plot thread of the movie, and the relationship between the two characters, matched in Poehler’s and Smith’s voicing, is more oil/water than acid/base: Sadness doesn’t want to bring anyone down, but she can’t help it, while Joy remains indefatigable in the face of unfathomable odds. Sadness wants to be more like Joy, while Joy looks on Sadness as a well-meaning nuisance, so you can see who’s going to learn what lesson in the end. It’s how we get there that makes most Pixar movies such memorable experiences for the viewer – if you have a kid, you’ll probably get a little weepy, as I did at a few points during Inside Out – and such great art. The ending is happy, happier than, say, Toy Story 3, but it’s yellow with a few spots of blue.

The great achievement of Inside Out‘s plot isn’t the ending, or the adventure in Long-Term Memory, but the fact that the film works so beautifully without an antagonist. There’s no villain, no Big Foozle, no evil queen, hell, there’s no princesses (not that I’m anti-princess but a change of pace is always welcome). Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust are not set in opposition to Joy, but are depicted as essential elements of human personality. We don’t get the Dragon of Solitude or the Alienation Wraith; when Riley’s emotions have to fight their way back, they’re fighting something fundamental, not an artificial plot-contrivance bad guy whom they have to kill to get to their goal. Inside Out‘s tension is built around time, not threat, yet the film never drags for the lack of a foil for our twin heroines.

Inside Out is full of Easter eggs, as most Pixar flicks are; I only caught a few of them, including the music in the nightmare, the Chinatown reference, and the homage to Steve Jobs’ “reality distortion field.” I didn’t realize the two jellybean-like things guarding the subconscious were actually voiced by Frank Oz and Dave Goelz, longtime Muppet performers. There are apparently several I missed in the classroom scene, although I’m not sure I would have caught any without a remote control in my hand to pause it.

I’m kind of bummed that my daughter is too old for the Inside Out Box of Mixed Emotions, five books, one per emotion, aimed at 3- to 5-year-olds. It looks like Driven by Emotions is more age-appropriate; I’ll report back if we read that one.

Lava, the short animated feature that preceded Inside Out, is a cute but insubstantial love story, remarkable mostly for the quality of its animation (especially the landscapes on the sides of the two volcanoes) and the film’s song, which reminded me of the late native Hawai’an singer Israel Kamakawiwo’ole. Known as Israel K., his cover of “Over the Rainbow” is the only version of that song I can stand, and Lava‘s main voice-over actor, Kuana Torres Kahele, even sings in a similar fashion to Israel K.’s style.

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→ July 1, 2013
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Monsters University.

My report on Saturday night’s doubleheader in Wilmington, featuring Kyle Zimmer, A.J. Cole, and Robbie Ray, is up for Insiders now. I should be at Bowie on Tuesday night to see Eduardo Rodriguez, weather permitting.

Monsters, Inc. is one of my favorite Pixar films because it’s appropriate for kids (as all Pixar films are) but is in so many ways a mature, adult film. The issues involved are real, the perceived threat to the main characters is serious (even though we know it’ll work out), the humor is sophisticated, and the animation is superb. I had a feeling heading into Monsters University that it wouldn’t live up to its predecessor, and it didn’t – this prequel is more of a children’s movie than the typical Pixar film, lacking a strong antagonist and missing much of the trademark sharp humor of Pixar movies, although it was still fun to watch and beautifully rendered.

Monsters University is almost a bromance, telling us the story of how the two stars of Monsters, Inc., Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and Sully (John Goodman) first met while students – and rivals – in their college’s Scare Program. Aside from a brief and somewhat hackneyed intro with Mike as a young monster, we spend nearly the entire movie watching just a few days of action on campus, learning that Mike was the studious worker while Sully was the gifted son of a famous scarer. (Sully was the five-tool athlete here, while Mike had heart and grit and no natural talent.) We get cameos by Randy Boggs (Steve Buscemi) and other familiar faces from the first film, but the bulk of the activity from characters beyond Mike and Sully comes from new monsters and voices, including the fraternity the two join – Oozma Kappa – to try to win back their places in the Scare Program after a petty fight gets them both kicked out right before a critical final exam.

From there, we get a traditional underdogs narrative with a strong dose of teamwork, where Mike and Sully have to work together to train their misfit brothers, none of whom could scare a panphobe, to win the competition that will get them all back into the Scare Program. As you’d expect, each of the misfits finds some special talent or skill that comes in handy right at the moment when they need the help most. It’s well-executed, especially the parts with the five-eyed gelatinous Scott “Squishy” Squibbles, but aside from one plot element – the Big Twist that leads from the first, false climax to the film’s real resolution – it’s all rather expected. And with no true villain, the tension never gets very high; even Dean Hardscrabble, voiced by the always wonderful Helen Mirren, isn’t so evil or even mean, just strict and demanding. That lack of any character with actual intent to harm the protagonists means it’s appropriate for younger audiences than the typical Pixar film, but there’s less here for the parents, less humor – just a lot of good sight gags involving monster malleability – and less story.

The best thing Monsters University offers is the smarmy, condescending performance by Nathan Fillion as the big, scary head of the cool-monsters fraternity RΩR, who puts Mike down at every opportunity with a classic “I can barely put forth the energy to patronize you” tone. I’m a longtime Fillion fan, dating back to Firefly, and will subject myself to Castle when my wife watches it, just to watch Fillion crack wise a few times. (It’s not a good show by any definition, and Castle Minus Castle would probably be the worst 44 minutes on television.) But Fillion doesn’t get enough good lines, making more happen with his delivery than with his actual phrasing, with the few good one-liners going to his yes-man sidekick, the one-eyed Chet Alexander (voiced by SNL castmember Bobby Moynihan). Whether you think Billy Crystal is funny as a comedian or actor, he was funny in Monsters, Inc. because he took good material and played it up. Here, he doesn’t get the same kind of lines, and there’s little he can do to make them funnier, and John Goodman’s Sully is almost entirely a straight man, although his character benefits from the strongest development, going from spoiled legacy student to top-tier scarer and, of course, a good friend.

I’d take a child of just about any age to see Monsters University, unless s/he was especially prone to nightmares or bad dreams, which is the closest this film comes to producing any actually scary content. It’s lighthearted and sweet, without the emotional depth or breadth of a good Pixar film, which means a lot less explaining after the fact but also gives the film a superficial quality that wasn’t present in Monsters, Inc. It’s worth seeing for the family, and the preceding short film, The Blue Umbrella, is cute, but can’t touch Pixar classics like The Incredibles or the Toy Story trilogy.

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→ October 7, 2012
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The Odd Life of Timothy Green.

The Odd Life of Timothy Green works best as an all-ages movie, one that had to be simplified to appeal to a younger audience as well as the adult crowd taking the kids to see it, but that process of simplification went too far to make the film interesting or compelling on an entirely-adult level. Granted, there’s a market for movies that are strictly for kids, but the best films for kids are those that still resonate for older audiences, something that Odd Life fails to do.

A childless couple, Cynthia (Jennifer Garner, also known as Sydney Bristow) and Jim (Joel Edgerton, who was superb in a supporting role in Animal Kingdom), are telling the story to two adoption officials to explain why they would be suitable candidates to adopt a child. (The lead official is played by Iranian-American actress Shohreh Aghdashloo, who might have one of the five best voices in Hollywood.) After learning that, for reasons unstated to us, they will be unable to have children of their own. In a wine-fueled attempt at closure, they write the list of traits their ideal child would have had on sheets torn off a tiny notepad, place those sheets in a small jewelry or cigarbox, and bury it in their garden. That night, with the help of a highly localized thunderstorm, a ten-year-old boy named Timothy appears in their house, calling them Mom and Dad … and bearing leaves on his lower legs. No one seems to ask too many questions about how this couple suddenly are parents to a fully-formed child, nor is anyone all that concerned with the slightly odd things that seem to happen when he’s around. Best not to ask too many questions if you realize you’re participating in someone else’s fable.

The movie spends most of its 100 minutes dancing on the line between sweet and maudlin, and it tends a little much toward the latter. Its best moments involve Timothy acting with almost Zen-like calm when faced with others, mostly adults but occasionally children, who attempt to take out their misery on him, only to find his demeanor immutable. The one who won’t change, the blatantly sleazy and absurdly named Franklin Crudstaff, scion of the family that own’s the pencil factory that provides the bulk of employment in the town, gets his compeuppance in the end in an overly pat, sentimental scene where his own mother sells him down the river. Even when you want to like what’s going on on-screen, there’s an element of empty calories to the story that, for me, spoiled my ability to suspend my disbelief even for a few minutes.

The main problem I had with Timothy Green, in the film’s own terms, is that he had one leaf too many. The various anecdotes that add up to Timothy’s odd life are all so abbreviated that even the best-explained one, involving Timothy’s artsy sort-of-girlfriend Joni, remains fairly shallow – again, easier for the single-digit portion of the audience to follow, but very unsatisfying for their parents. Cynthia’s sister, played to annoying shrillness by Rosemarie Dewitt, is the caricature of an overbearing soccer mom, making frequent digs at her sister and at Timothy’s oddness, apparently masking some inner sadness or emptiness that is never explained. Dianne Wiest is wasted as a one-note character, Franklin’s humorless mother; she’s great, but this is sort of like asking Linus Torvalds to help you change your computer’s wallpaper. The script only gave the meaty roles to Garner and Edgerton, who do their best with somewhat stock characters, and I called every plot twist before it happened, not just because the setups were obvious but because the film couldn’t progress in any other direction.

Foremost among those obvious points was the fact that Timothy Green had to die. Without that – and his death is portrayed as a disappearance on screen, which should be minimally traumatic for younger viewers – the film would devolve from fable to pure fantasy: A childless couple gets the perfect child and they live happily ever after. With Timothy working against the clock, it’s easier to interpret the film on an adult level as a classic if slightly hoary fable – our time is finite, whether we’re referring to our lives or to specific relationships, and we don’t know how long we have, so we need to make the most of it by making other people happier.

Odeya Rush, playing Joni, stood out as an actress to watch both for her performance and because she’s going to grow up to be a stunner. Lin-Manuel Miranda (was completely wasted as the nerdy (and perhaps gay?) gardening expert who makes just two brief appearances in the film, although even a brief cameo from the man who wrote and sang “Silent E is a Ninja” makes any film better. Both are exactly what The Odd Life of Timothy Green needed more of – charismatic actors whose characters didn’t get enough screen time because the script called for Timothy to get involved in one or two stories too many for the movie’s run time. It’s appropriate for kids but I’m afraid there isn’t enough here to engage their parents.

Next up: I saw Looper last night and really enjoyed it. I’ll shoot to get that review up in 24 hours, before Arizona Fall League insanity starts on Tuesday.

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