Just got back from it. I liked it I suppose. Didn’t think many of the jokes were laugh out loud funny, most of the theater was pretty quiet for most of the time. I thought it was creative and much darker for a “kids” movie.
I didn’t tug heartstrings for me because I just didn’t grow up in a lovey lovey household. No “I love you’s”, no family hugs, no both parents coming to cheer me on in my hobbies. I know that I’m in the minority (or at least I hope I am) but it’s hard for me to empathize (and therefore get weepy) on the family stuff.
I just saw it and, as I said before, the basic set-up is like Herman’s Head and the “What Happens During Ejaculation?” section of Every thing You Always Wanted to Know about Sex But Were Afraid to Ask*. That’s only the initial situation though, and the three works go different ways with the idea. It’s a reasonably good but not great film, I think. I don’t think really young children would get much out of the film. There were a lot of kids in the movie theater where I saw it though. Some parents have the idea that any child, no matter the age, can understand any animated movie.
Went to see it with my four-year-old daughter. She loved it. She wants Joy and Sadness dolls, and wants the movie on DVD.
I, on the other hand, cried through the whole damn thing (literally 90 minutes of tears rolling down my cheeks, and trying to hide it from my daughter) and have been limp as a dishrag ever since–possibly because *we *are about to move cross-country. Frankly, I never want to see the movie again. I don’t want my entertainment to leave me prostrate.
Saw this today with my wife (no kids!), and I’m on board with all of the effusive praise. It struck me as an older-kids movie, more the 9-12 age range than 3-6: there were some relatively complex concepts for a Pixar movie, it was (again relatively) on the darker side, and there was at least one scene that played off of a stereotypical childhood fear for humor that I could just as easily see going for actual fear for a four year old.
That’s just nitpicking the marketing as much as anything, though (hard to blame Disney/Pixar for trying to get as many kids as possible into the theater). I loved this, and it goes into the “great Pixar movies” bucket, a little short of my very favorites but in the excellent tier right below that.
As a bonus, the short was also top-notch. Made me happy to have someone to lava.
I saw it today, and it’s the best work from Pixar in a long while, and a superb movie by any measure. They did a great job of extending the metaphor for the entire film without it seeming forced or unnatural. It was definitely for an older audience than recent Pixar (which have been aimed more at kids), and the themes are all handled brilliantly.
Honey:
The fate of Bing Bong, her imaginary playmate, who deliberately sacrifices his life
The little girl’s family moves away from her home and friends. She is unhappy, then depressed, then so miserable she runs away from home. When you’re watching the movie next to your little girl, whom you are about to move across the country, and you are exhausted and frazzled from preparing for the move across the country, it’s pretty fucking eviscerating.
So this was today’s movie, my father’s day choice and whatsitooya. Three immediate thoughts.
A rather lightweight movie playing with some very, very big pieces. I’d rank it low on the overall Pixar scale because it’s pretty thin and sketchy compared to most of them… but I think the issues and concepts it wrestles with outweigh all the other films’ put together.
If it was anime it would be hailed as genius of the zeroth order.
They still don’t have eyes down. Every time an otherwise immobile character moved their eyes, I swear I could hear little servomotors. I don’t know why this mega-rez animation has “move character” and “move hyper-realistic eyeballs” modes that are exclusive.
My wife and I saw it today and both loved it. Lots of interesting ideas and visuals, but also lots of stuff that’s just funny.
One neat thing my wife pointed out: in the child’s mind, the emotions are very very distinct from each other, with Joy in charge. In the parents’ minds, the 5 emotions are much less distinct, but a different one is in charge (sadness for the mom, anger for the dad). Add that to the way that Riley’s emotions started being multicolored, and the increased complexity of the control panel, and it’s definitely playing with the idea that things get more complicated and multi-layered as you get older. I love that it had deep ideas without ever being preachy or pedantic.
(I also enjoyed the opening Lava short… anyone know if that’s based on Hawaiian myths?)
A tip then. Spirited Away came out on blu-ray this week. It’s a great movie but it also has a plotline involving a girl being unhappy when her family moves. So you might want to avoid this as well - or at least until you get settled in at your new place.
I noticed that as well and kinda wondered if they’d get called on it. After the movie I was looking at the Trivia section on IMDB and it mentioned that Joy is supposed to look like a star, Disgust is broccoli, anger is a nerve and sadness is a teardrop. It makes sense based on that, but since most of the movie was focused on just Joy and Sad it was kinda like watching a Tinkerbell movie with a bunch of ads for anti-depression meds woven in…just WRT to Sadness being short fat lump.
Anyways, I liked it, I’d never heard of it until today when my sister and my daughter were going to it and I went with them. It’s good, but it did seem a bit ‘heavy’ for a Pixar movie.
Also, I’m curious as to how close they are when it comes to how memory works.
I guess it depends what lesson you took from it. I said to my daughter afterwards “There were two important morals to that movie.” spoiler If you’re feeling sad, tell your parents so we can help you feel better.
(2) No matter how much you miss the Midwest or think the West coast sucks, running away and buying a bus ticket home isn’t the answer! (We moved last year.)[/spoiler]
In DBT, all other emotions are considered mixtures of those. Of those, only Surprise, Guilt, and Love were missing, and it would’ve made the cast too large if they were there. Joy also kinda ate love/interest.
The islands were very close to what we described as “core values”, which in DBT is sort of the rock of your personality that makes you “you”. Despite what most people call values, while “hockey” may be a bit specific, things like “love of sports” can be values in DBT.
In fact some of the big lessons of that section in DBT are: labeling your emotions in terms of the core emotions, identifying and not betraying your values, and allowing yourself to feel the entire range of your emotions are core DBT skills. In addition, identifying when emotions aren’t effective, or don’t fit the facts is also important. Like not feeling Shame for not feeling Joy, or identifying that Fear isn’t helpful in a situation (though it’s never wrong to feel an emotion, just not helpful), or allowing yourself to be sad.
The entire movie reminded me a lot of that DBT skills section.
Thanks. We’ve had that DVD unopened on the shelf for over a year. I bought it when we were on a Miyazaki kick, but my husband doesn’t want to watch a downer.
It’s not a downer overall. The story is about how Chihiro learns to face her fears and learns two things: that the things she was afraid of weren’t as bad as they first appeared and that she is more capable than she had realized.
Also, the whole “moving” aspect is pretty negligible, I completely forgot that aspect of the movie. If it’s even explicitly mentioned, it’s only in the very opening.
I’m not sure what you took to be the “lesson” of this movie. I thought it was fairly simple, but incredibly affecting: that as kids move into adulthood, their emotional reactions stop being simple and start being complex. It saying to the parents: A day will come when your child, who used to be this primal ball of straightforward feelings, never again experiences a moment of truly unmitigated joy. That’s a pretty intense message, especially when you’re watching it sitting next to an 11-year-old girl who’s trying to process that transformation in her own life.
I read somewhere last night after watching the movie yesterday with my five year old that the writer/director wrote this movie as a way for him to cope with his own feelings as he watched his own daughter go from a child to an adolescent.
I thought it was brilliant. My 5 year old loved it as an adventure story and I enjoyed the underlying metaphor for loss of innocence that happens as you grow up and life gets complicated. It’s impressive that they could do both so deftly.
My biggest complaint was that the recovery was too quick. We’ve seen all of Riley’s islands crumble, in great detail: They’re not just fading, they’re falling apart and tumbling into an abyss. This girl is in seriously bad shape. But as soon as her core memories get plugged back in, Poof, there are the islands again. I would have preferred to see her re-built islands start as being very crude and rudimentary, without all the adornments. And getting built up again in the “year later” ending, of course: Recovery does happen, but it’s not instantaneous.
I did really like the looks into others’ heads, though, and the contrast between child and adult. Not only does the psyche get more complicated with age (Riley’s console gets upgraded at the end, and also, remember her console as a baby? There was only one button, or perhaps one for each of the emotions), but also, in Riley’s head, all of the emotions are working on their own, and fighting for control. Joy has more control than the others, maybe, but everyone’s just butting in whenever they feel like it. Joy’s control is mostly a matter of being more assertive about her butting in. In the adults, though, all of the emotions are very clearly working together, with assigned seats at a console that resembles a board-room table.