Pixar's 'Inside Out' - better than I thought it would be.

When I saw the trailer for Pixar's 'Inside Out' for the first time, I was pretty sure that it couldn't be any good. My gut instincts told me that the concept of the movie was just too complex and that the film would likely be a pretty big mess.

I mean, the idea that we had emotions as characters inside animated characters didn't seem plausible or interesting at all. I felt that it was a relatively childish idea and that Pixar had run out of ideas. My hopes for the film were not high at all.

Nevertheless, I saw the movie a couple of days ago and it turned out that 'Inside Out' was better than I thought it would be. Even though - in my opinion - it's not one of Pixar's best animations, it's still rather watchable as a whole.

For starters, there's no denying that in just about every imaginable way, 'Inside Out' looks and sounds really good. The characters look wonderful and the voice acting, as usual, is top notch in the film too. One couldn't ask for much more.

I was also pleasantly surprised when it came to the storyline (in general) and the themes in the film. I thought it was a pretty good decision to try to make the movie as simplistic as possible. Otherwise I don't think the movie would have worked at all.

In any case, the film is about an eleven year old girl who moves with her family from a cold Midwest state to a warm California. It's about how her five basic emotions inside her react to the changes in her living environment.

It's hard to make a story any simpler than that, which is why every story moment in the film's script has to be extremely well thought out. Every crucial moment in the script has to make sense or else the movie doesn't work as well as it should.

Pixar apparently took their task really seriously. They took it so seriously that they reportedly had close to twenty writers working on the script. They knew that this would perhaps be their most ambitious screenplay, so they tried their best.

Yet, if you have seen the movie, it's pretty obvious that they weren't able to fix all the problems they had with the screenplay. There are certain mistakes in the movie that will keep me from thinking that 'Inside Out' is a great film.

Probably the biggest weakness in 'Inside Out' has to do with its 'inciting incident'. This crucial moment is not only way too weak, but it also comes out of nowhere and isn't plausible. The writers weren't able to sync what happened outside and inside, which is a huge problem.

The other big flaw in the movie is how they used exposition. It's difficult to think that using a voice-over was the only way to introduce us to those 'core memories' and different islands that memories were made of. That was just way too much for us to digest.

These are some of the reasons why some people couldn't get into the film. It made it look confusing and made it look like the characters weren't relatable or interesting. It made the movie look like it was a boring educational video instead of entertainment.

But if one was able to get past these problems that were in the film's first act, I think the movie was able to reward the viewer. There's some genuinely good stuff about how we emotionally grow as human beings - which felt pretty important and touching too.

As a whole I have to say that watching 'Inside Out' was a rather weird experience. That is that it's obvious that the producers and the writers of the film tried really hard and that some really talented people were involved with making the film what it is.

At the same time, the flaws in the movie are pretty obvious too. In many ways I can't help but to think that they should have worked on the script more. In my opinion 'Inside Out' could and should have been better than it turned out to be.