Great premise, fails to deliver

Rating: 5/10 (30 June 2015)

Having loved the Toy Story franchise and Wall-E in particular, I expect Pixar movies to be highly entertaining, with moments of complex emotional brilliance. So when everyone began raving about this latest release, which aimed to take animated children's movies to totally new depths, I was really looking forward to it. And it DID reach new depths - just not in a good way.
My first issue is that I wasn't emotionally - aha - invested in any of the characters. Riley to begin with seemed just a little too perfect, thanks to Joy being at the controls. And of course, the emotions themselves are entirely one-dimensional. Joy's goal, of keeping Riley happy all the time, just isn't emotionally rounded and gripping in the way Woody's fear of replacement and jealousy of Buzz, or Wall-E's loneliness and longing for Eve, are. Because of that, I found it really hard to care about the stakes, basically that Riley would "get sad" and argue with her parents. That this would upset Joy in turn didn't bother me at all - everything freaked Joy out. She was basically a flatter, passive-aggressive version of Marlin from Finding Nemo.
I also found it disappointing that Riley NEVER fought her emotions. The story treated humans as hollow shells being manipulated solely by their feelings. The message seemed to be that "hey kids, it's not your fault how you deal with problems, it's the little person in your head". I thought the story would develop the idea that it's learning to deal with your emotions - whether you let Anger press your buttons or not - that makes you mature as a person, but this wasn't the case at all. I agree with the poster who said Bing Bong is a bit Jar-Jar Binks, although I actually found him the most emotionally developed character of the lot. At least in his case you felt the stakes were reasonably high.
Finally, the plot was all over the place, focusing on the cleverness of developing little islands and cool tech without really building tension. The repetitiveness meant momentum was constantly lost. I'm not saying all kids' movies need a proper villain, but it would certainly have helped the story in this case. The humour and "entertainment factor" you expect from a kid's film was also totally lacking - I actually think this would really bore younger kids. I've still given the film 5 stars, because I thought the idea was a good one, and the voice acting was good. But frankly, as far as kids' films with a message go, it gets the pants kicked off it by Wall-E and Wreck-It Ralph. In terms of entertainment value, it's just lucky it shares its release with Minions, because only that absolute yellow turd can make this one look sharp by comparison.