I’ve just seen the preview screening today.
Spoilers abound, so if you haven’t seen the movie, don’t click on the Reveal function:
[spoiler]It was an interesting movie.
Despite what the first trailer shows, most of the movie is centered around Riley’s mental world, we rarely see the mental worlds of other characters, except for the first day dinner scene, the end of the movie and the montage (more on that later).
Unusually, Riley is the only central kid character in the movie, except for Meg (who is a cameo at best, her role is only minor scenes and only 2 of them at that).
I think you can also track the state of Riley’s mind by watching her wardrobe, she starts out wearing bright colors and as she sinks further into depression, she starts shifting towards an all black ensemble.
I always wondered why Joy was not blonde when all the other emotions had hair that matched their chronal palette.
Now I know the reason, Joy is a matched pair with Sadness, it’s a hint towards the big reveal near the end of the movie, that the memory orbs have two settings dependent on which side you are viewing.
Joy retrieves her favorite happy memory which had been misplaced and this is revealed when she finds the “other side” late in the movie.
I did wonder how this movie would function without a villian, since there didn’t appear to be one,
And while her intentions weren’t intentionally malicious, it is actually Joy who caused the all the problems in the movie and is playing the role of the viliianess.
Basically, from the first moment of coming into existence, Joy was actively suppressing Sadness (she was the second emotion to arrive), not realizing that they were meant to work as a pair.
Disgust also had an interesting scene at the end of the movie where she shows that she’s not as superficial as she appears.
Joy manages to get her and Sadness back to Control, but they’re trapped on the outside and Anger’s attempt to break the window to let them in spectactularly fails, Disgust comes to the rescue.
She makes him as angry as possible, then produces a welding mask from Hammerspace and uses him as a blowtorch to cut through the window.
There was a scene that made me wonder what Riley’s future occupation will be.
Bing Bong makes a heroic sacrifice to help Joy escape the memory void and his last words were “take her to the moon for me” to which Joy responds “I will”.
I wonder if this implies Riley will be a future astronaut when she grows up.
It was so funny to see the earworm scene.
There’s a gum commercial that drives Anger insane (he hates the song) and the Mind Workers keep sending the memory orb of it up to Control as a practical joke.
I’m assuming the adults who were attending this session hadn’t seen the first dinner scene movie, because there was a huge laugh when the line “Come with me Gahina” line was delivered.
And while we’re on the topic of Helicopter Guy, it turns out to be a good thing Mrs Anderson didn’t get involved with him.
The end of the movie reveals he said that to every woman he met.
You may deliver the “You Cad!” slap to the face now.
It was interesting to see the end of the movie brought back the frame-in-frame montage silliness.
I don’t think we’ve seen that for a while.
It basically shows several of the minor characters and a couple of animals Control stations.
The ones I can remember are the Cool Girl (blue hair streak), Riley’s new school teacher and the Bored Pizza Girl.
The one disappointment was that were was no easter egg, I thought it was a tradition for every Pixar production to have one after the end credits finish rolling.[/spoiler]
And here’s an anecdote to pass on to the musical department:
I was watching the end credits when I realize somebody else had stayed as well (most of the audience usually have departed as soon as the credits start rolling).
This little girl gets up and starts dancing to the music (whatever song was playing, I think it was an instrumental track).
So she definitely appreciated the work the composers and musicians put into it.
However, the cinema did do something that disappointed me.
Everytime I’ve been to them to see a 3D movie that I’ve been really looking forward to, it’s always shown on a 2D screen because a less deserving movie is using the only 3D screen it has.
I think I know what movie was using it and it just gives me one more reason to dislike that movie!
It was especially disappointing since the opening scene of Lava (the theatrical short preceding the movie) was clearly designed to be an awe inspiring 3D scene and half the impact was lost because the depth perception wasn’t there.
I’m still confused why Disney keeps inserting the video games message at the end of every movie, considering their games division has been non-productive (or minimally productive) for the most part.
We’re getting a better deal for Inside Out this time around (a Disney Infinity playset), but the norm is just DI figures and maybe a mobile device game.
And that’s if we are lucky…
I don’t think I’ve seen a true game since the Brave one came out.