My but we’re complicated creatures aren’t we?
Rarely adhering to the logical approach to anything, as apt to run with the best way to do something as to disregard it on the basis of a whim, we are, to extents large and small, driven by the emotions that seem to swirl around like a maelstrom inside us.
But what if, wonders Pixar’s upcoming film Inside Out, what if what looks like messy, emotional all over the place-ness is actually the result of an often fractious gathering together of feelings, sitting at giant computer consoles consensually or sort of consensually, orchestrating our every move?
What then? What would we look like then from the titular Inside Out?
Why we’d look like the gloriously-funny, on-the-money brightly-colour emotions that populate the first full trailer for a film that, like many of its Pixar brethren is going to an intellectual and socially-insightful cut above the average run of the mill animated flick.
The real joy of Pixar’s films is that while they’re a joy to watch on a gleefully-happy childlike level, they have a huge amount of stuff going on in the background too, making them one of those genuine cinematic treats that can be shared by children and adults alike.
The trailer is packed full of hilarious gender commentary, nicely contrasting the idea that men and women approach life from vastly different angles and that children are a whole other world unto themselves beyond that, something The Guardian points out in its summation of the trailer’s beautifully-rendered familial dynamics:
“In the new clip, the former is absent from the mind of 11-year-old Riley, who is upset after being forced to move away from her home and friends in Minnesota for a new life with her mum and dad in San Francisco. Fear, Anger and Disgust take over in her mind, leading to predictable chaos around the family dinner table.
Riley’s mother, voiced by Diane Lane, does her best to get to the bottom of her daughter’s distress. But silly old dad (Kyle MacLachlan) just makes things worse because his own emotional controllers are far too busy watching sport to spend any serious effort connecting with his offspring. His own Fear, Anger and Disgust take charge and Riley is sent to her room, dad celebrating what he appears to believe is a perfectly pitched fatherly response to unprecedented levels of ‘sass’.”
It is bright, charming, funny and clever, everything we have come to expect from Pixar, making the wait until June 2015 all that more interminable.
I can see the Impatient emotion in me jumping around like a banshee on Skittles and Pepsi Max already …