Sorry guys, Pixar isn't back yet

Rating: 6/10 (22 June 2015)

So I saw Inside Out and I really enjoyed watching it. Now if you're wondering why I only gave it a 6 it's because I am basing my rating off how good of a film I think this movie is rather than my how much I enjoyed it. My enjoyment rating would be a 9, I had a lot of fun watching it and also the animated short at the beginning was pretty good. This is not a bad film at all but unlike everyone is saying I don't think it is a fantastic one, I see it currently has a 100% on rotten tomatoes, and I do not think it deserves that.
Now when it comes to Pixar I am not really impressed with them anymore. Their more recent movies have decreased in quality and other animation companies have really stepped up their game and been improving. I can definitely say I think How to Train Your Dragon 2 is better than Inside Out. I am sure that I am not the only person who thinks that Pixar has been on a decline because I think we can all agree Cars 2 was only made to sell merchandise, and even die hard Pixar fans can say Brave wasn't that great. The whole appeal to Pixar and why everyone liked them so much is because they were original and stood out from the competition. But lately they have gotten very formulaic and they most commonly rip off their own movies. Another reason Pixar was so good was because of their superb animation, but lately other animation companies are starting to look just as good. Pixar has always had fantastic texture and environment design, and with Inside Out this is still true but nothing really stood out and their character design needs to be better if they want to stay ahead of the competition. Lately you can see a big trend of them doing sequels like Toy Story 3, Cars 2, and Monsters University, and we are getting even more with Finding Dory, and Incredibles 2. And they are doing this only to sell millions of dollars in merchandise. So you can see my problem after I said that what made Pixar great was being original. When I saw the trailer to Inside Out, what worried me was they did the whole "hey we are Pixar, remember all those movies we made that you love!" I honestly think if they hadn't done that the movie wouldn't have been as anticipated and it could've been advertised as a DreamWorks movie.
So as in terms of the actual movie, there was nothing that I particularly didn't like about it. It's just that many things were not as good as it could've been and it was also predictable and many characters and elements were not as interesting as they should've been. I thought the plot was a little predictable, and there were some conveniences and events that felt a little lazy. like how each of the islands fall just as they got to them, or how the island crashes into the Train of Thought while they are on it. There are a couple things that don't make sense, like how losing hockey island makes Riley suddenly suck, I thought it was just part of her personality, and not her abilities. And how she sometimes acts bipolar, like one moment really happy talking about her childhood, and then later she is crying in the middle of class. And when they lose the islands of personality does that literally mean she has no personality, is she just a hallow person with no personality and feelings about anything. I know in that these are minor issues and shouldn't be taken so seriously in a kids movie, it's just when everyone is saying that this movie is tailored a lot towards adults and deals with something as complex as the human brain, I can't help but wonder about these things.
I would say that the biggest problem that this movie suffers from is with the characters. Now the characters aren't bad and I actually liked all the emotions and thought they were funny and they were terrifically voice acted, it's just that you don't care about any of them. A large part of this issue is with the fact that they are literally emotions so you know how they are going to respond. Fear is going to be afraid, Anger is going to be angry, Sadness is going to be sad, and so on. The only person that shows other emotions beside the one that they literally are is Joy who has the most diverse personality among the five of them. It's just hard to relate and care about a character when they are bound to feeling and reacting one way throughout the entire film. Also a problem is that the human characters that you can actually flesh out are given the least attention. The hardest human character to care about is actually Riley; this is because you know that everything she does is the emotions inside her head. And since these emotions are actual characters in the movie it makes it seem like they are controlling her and Riley has no free will at all.
I know it may seem like I am really hating on this movie but I'm not. There is much enjoyment to be had in it and if you are looking for a family movie to take your kids to they will love it. I just can't overlook the fact that this is a Pixar movie and therefore could've been a lot better when compared to their older movies. I grow more concerned for Pixar's direction as a company when they keep releasing unoriginal and underwhelming films. This is an alright movie and I did enjoy more than a lot of Pixar's more recent films, but unfortunately this is not a return to Pixar's glory days.