Originally Posted By Kar2oonMan >>At the end of the movie, were you more moved by Riley's emotional breakthrough? Or the death of Bing Bong?<< To the first: yes. To the latter: HELL yes! I was a mess when Bing Bong died. Not Toy Story 3 level sobbing, but close. I think the stakes were about Riley possibly losing her connection to her family at a critical juncture. A preteen, in a new city, distracted busy parents, all of that could end badly for a family. So I thought the stakes mattered. Internally, Joy had to realize that part of life is sadness, and the way to deal with it is not to gloss over and ignore it. The brilliance of the movie I thought was that not everything that went wrong was all Sadness' fault. Joy caused a lot of the chaos by trying to totally take over. All of us probably wrestle with those various emotions as adults, but in preteens, it's all elevated and extreme, and to see that internal struggle visualized in such a clever way was what I enjoyed about it. And Michael Giacchino's soundtrack music, it somehow had a warm, futurist People Mover concourse feel to it (at least for me) that instantly connected with me.
Originally Posted By TheRedhead "And all of the time and attention was focused on Joy." Well, yeah. She was the main character. The film is HER journey, with her choices mirroring (and, in the film's universe, directly affecting) what's happening to Riley. It's all about Joy's need to embrace sadness, which is the only way for her (and her "owner") to find happiness. Riley's journey is rather simple. It needs to be. Because the story going on with the feelings might be the most complicated, heady, academic, intelligent deconstruction of how our brains really work. And they did it in a freaking cartoon. " I was a mess when Bing Bong died." I was a HEAVING mess. I've never seen a film so perfectly capture the most painful moment of all our lives - the moment when we have to pitch our heaviest childhood baggage overboard in order to move forward in life. But if you don't want to look at it too deeply, it's STILL a scene where someone's imaginary friend commits suicide. What a punch. For my money, Wall-E is the tops, bold and brilliant and beautiful. But Inside Out comes right behind. Of course there's no need to make all Pixar movies compete with each other, but I'll do it anyway. Inside Out is just about as perfect a film as you can get.
Originally Posted By mawnck >Kar2oonMan for President. Yes, PLEASE. I'm literally BEGGING this time. Back on topic … Apparently I'm the only cold-hearted psychopath in America who wasn't that put-out by the whole Bing Bong thing. I guess it's because I saw it coming about 10 seconds after they introduced the character. Watching way too many animated movies has its downsides I guess.
Originally Posted By ecdc >>I guess it's because I saw it coming about 10 seconds after they introduced the character.<< I do think the narrative arc of Inside/Out was off. That's not the criticism it appears to be--it's not inherently flawed to not break down the film in three acts. But audiences are so used to it that I do think the movie doesn't flow the way people expect it to. We expect certain beats at certain points, and it doesn't happen here. Get past that and I think it's a pretty brilliant film that improves significantly with each viewing.
Originally Posted By ecdc Now Lava, Lava I didn't much get at all. But apparently a lot of people loved it.
Originally Posted By Yookeroo "Apparently I'm the only cold-hearted psychopath in America who wasn't that put-out by the whole Bing Bong thing." "Cold-hearted" implies that you have a heart when clearly you don't. Different strokes.....
Originally Posted By FerretAfros Meh, I also didn't care too much about Bung Bong. I liked him as a conceptual figure, but found the actual character to be kind of annoying The more I think about the movie, the more I like the characters and am nonplussed by the actual story arc. There are a lot of great moments and jokes, but it just seemed to lack cohesion
Originally Posted By Jim in Merced CA <There are a lot of great moments and jokes, but it just seemed to lack cohesion> Same
