Review: Inside Out (2015)

* * * *
Director: Pete Docter
Starring: Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Kaitlyn Dias, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Bill Hader

For a film about the psyche of an 11 year old girl, Pixar's Inside Out tells an awfully mature story. Not content to be merely a farce about personified emotions run amok inside someone's head, Pete Doctor's film has greater ambitions than that. Inside Out tells a story about the sometimes painful process of growing up, about the things that have to be left behind in order to make way for the things to come, and the ways that you have to change the person you were for the sake of the person you're going to become. As a result it's a film that is sad as often as it is funny, and one which is profoundly thoughtful and moving. Pixar has no shortage of great movies to its credit, and Inside Out is surely one of its very best.

Oscarstravaganza: Finding Nemo

* * * *

Winner: Best Animated Feature, 2003

Director: Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich

One of the most critically and commercially successful animated films of the last decade, if not of all time, Finding Nemo has long since assured its place in the hearts and minds of movie lovers. Using a few of the tried and true tropes of the children's story template while also making it accessible and enjoyable for adults writer/director Andrew Stanton and his co-director Lee Unkrich created an instant and bona fide classic.

Finding Nemo begins with Nemo and his father Marlin (voiced by Albert Brooks), all alone following the death of Nemo's mother. The loss of a parent is a familiar theme in many children's films (The Little Mermaid, Bambi, The Lion King, etc.), as is the positioning of the protagonist in the role of outsider. Here, Nemo is outcast because he has one small, weak fin that results in taunting from his fellow fish. In an attempt to prove himself Nemo swims out into open waters and is captured by a diver. He's placed in a tank in a dentist's office and plots his escape and return home.

Marlin, meanwhile, is frantic to find his son and receives help from all manner of sea creatures, including Dory (voiced by Ellen Degeneres), a fish with short term memory loss. While Nemo is making his escape back to the ocean through a drain, Marlin and Dory part ways, and it is Dory who eventually finds Nemo, though she's now forgotten that she was helping to look for him in the first place.

Finding Nemo occasionally veers into some pretty dark territory, what with death and familial separation being used to turn and shape the plot. I think that when we reach adulthood, we tend to forget just how dark and heavy the films we saw as children tended to be. I mean, Bambi's mom dies! The fox and the hound can't be friends anymore! Simba's uncle tries to kill him! But children's stories are designed to be related in a simple, easily digestible way that also imparts a lesson (or lessons). They paint with broad strokes (there's "good" and "evil" and nothing inbetween), but they also help to lay the groundwork for some of the realities that will be encountered in the process of growing up.

Here Stanton uses an adventure story as a framework in which to tell a story that's ultimately about acceptance. Nemo is mocked for his deformity, Dory's memory problem makes her the target of Marlin's anger and frustration. Both prove to be brave and capable in spite of their shortcomings, showing that "different" isn't always equal to "bad." It relates this lesson in terms that are simple enough to be understood by a child but engaging enough to keep an adult's attention. Pixar's films always set the standard for animated films in any given year, but few have set the bar quite as high as Finding Nemo.

Review: Up (2009)

* * * 1/2
Director: Pete Doctor, Bob Peterson
Starring: Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer

Unless you happen to live somewhere that mass media cannot reach you, you’re aware by now that Up is the latest weapon in Pixar’s scheme for world domination. If they keep making movies like this, it’ll be no contest. Given the general consensus on Terminator: Salvation maybe the thing to do to save the franchise is to reveal that Skynet is a front for Pixar and have John Connor battle to the death with Wall-E. Anyway… SQUIRREL!

Our hero in Up is a lovably cantankerous widower, Carl Frederickson, voiced by Ed Asner. We first meet Carl in the 1930s, when he’s a boy and idolizes Charles Muntz (Christopher Plummer), a once revered adventurer who enters into disgraced self-exile in the jungles of South America after being called a fraud. Carl forms a friendship with Ellie, a girl his age who also idolizes Muntz, and they grow up, get married and spend many happy decades together before Ellie grows ill and dies. The sequence showing Carl and Ellie’s life together is brief and wordless and generally quite devastating, the first hint that this film, nominally aimed at children, is going to enter some fairly dark territory. Although, having said that, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised since some of the more scarring moments from my childhood came courtesy of “kids” movies (a few examples: Bambi’s mother, the ostracization of Rudolf, the fox and the hound no longer being allowed to be friends).

Carl clings to the past, trying desperately to preserve his life with Ellie even in her corporeal absence. When developers threaten to take his house and have him placed in a nursing home, Carl rigs his house with balloons and sails away only to discover that young Wilderness Explorer Russell is stuck on his porch, determined to earn his “assisting the elderly” badge so that he can move up the ranks. Together they sail to South America, specifically to Paradise Falls, “the land that time forgot” and also the name of a deliciously campy nighttime soap that used to air here in Canada. That has nothing to do with Up, it just made me giggle, although come to think of it Charles Muntz would probably have been right at home in the Canadian Paradise Falls.

Along their travels Carl and Russell add a bird named Kevin and a dog named Dug to their posse and the rest of the plot I will leave you to discover for yourself. Written by Bob Peterson, a co-writer on Finding Nemo and a co-director here, the story is well-plotted and keeps things simple enough that it can be followed by kids while also being written cleverly enough to keep adults interested. The animation is, of course, outstanding with the vibrancy of the colour pallet being of particular note. I’m predisposed to dislike 3-D because I find the glasses uncomfortable and the form gimmicky, but it’s generally put to good use with this film and doesn't call attention to itself to the extent that it distracts from the film itself.

While I enjoyed the film overall - particularly anything involving Dug, whose obsession with squirrels reminded me of my parents' dog – I wouldn’t call it flawless. As it approached the end I was far too aware of how it was trying to manipulate me and though all films try to manipulate you in some form or another, subtlety goes a long way and it felt at times like Up was daring me not to go “awwww.” Still, it's a very good film that manages to cater to multiple demographics without pandering and the quality of its production is first-rate all the way.

Review: Wall-E (2008)

* * * *
Director: Andrew Stanton

Wall-E is a film of incredible ambition and intelligence, executed in a way that is absolutely flawless. With its lovable protagonist, strong message, admirably well-constructed story, and beautiful animation, this is a film that is destined to become an instant classic.

Wall-E takes place 700 years in the future, where mankind has spent the last several centuries waiting for waste disposal robots to make earth inhabitable again. Amid skyscrapers of garbage and the last remnants of civilization, only one of these robots has remained functional and continues to do his work. This, of course, is the titular Wall-E, who spends his days gathering trash and compacting it into little cubes, and also scavenging for items of interest (if, in fact, robots can be “interested” in something). One day something new arrives in Wall-E’s lonely world – a space craft which soon departs but leaves behind Eve, a drone sent to search for signs of organic life. Wall-E is instantly smitten and soon he’s showing Eve his collection, which includes a plant he finds growing inside an old refrigerator. The plant is the key to the story, signalling as it does that earth is once again able to sustain life and that the 700 year cruise (originally slated to last a mere 5 years) can finally come to its conclusion… if, of course, the robots in control of the ship can be overthrown.

I should state at the outset that I’m not someone who gravitates naturally to animated films. This isn’t to say that I have anything against animation, it’s just that as an adult I’ve rarely felt myself compelled to seek out animated movies. Even Pixar’s films, which are decidedly impressive and well-made, rarely draw me into the theatre (of all their films the only ones I’ve seen aside from this are Toy Story, Monster’s Inc. and Finding Nemo). That being said, I was delighted by the breadth and scope of this particular film. This is a story that really has a lot to say about the way we live right now and the direction our society is heading, and it does so in a way that’s pointed and intelligent. Our culture is superficial and disposable – look at the things that surround Wall-E on earth: he rolls over an expanse of garbage and up to an abandoned superstore that stretches as far as the eye can see; he covets items such as sporks (but can’t decide whether to include them in his collection of spoons or his collection of forks) and an old videotape of Hello Dolly! (of all movies why Hello Dolly!? Does anyone ever think of this movie anymore? – I think that’s the point; we’re a culture of fads, of loving something one minute and abandoning it the next in favour of something else).

The film is also critical of mankind’s dependence on machines to make life easier. After generations aboard the cruise liner, people have become enormous, getting around aboard their hover chairs, speaking to each other via screens directly in front of their faces – even when the person to whom they’re speaking is cruising along right beside them. When someone falls out of his hover chair, he lies on the ground, helpless like a turtle on its back, waiting for a robot to come along and put him back where he belongs.

There’s far too much going on in Wall-E for me to mention every thing I enjoyed about it, but I did want to mention just one more thing: the absolutely awesome evocation of 2001: A Space Odyssey, which brings the film to a whole other level of genius.