Inside Out

First Hit:  The film was conceptually brilliant, for the most part very well executed, and very intelligent.

There probably isn’t a human being on this planet who hasn’t experienced one or all of the following; fear, anger, sadness, disgust, and joy.

Given this, Pixar did what no other filmmaker has ever done well, create an interpretation of the inner workings of the mind and made them the film’s main characters. Riley (Voice by Kaitlyn Dias) and her family moved from Minnesota to San Francisco where she feels lost, without her friends, familiar surroundings, furniture, and her dad is stressing about a company he’s creating. The comfort of what once was is now gone and changing.

This change allows other feelings, besides joy, to have a larger voice in her head. What results is what happened in this 12 year old’s mind. This film is brilliant in the sharing how the other emotions of fear, anger, joy, disgust and most importantly sadness can creep into a young person’s life. The lesson of not covering up, but embracing them and working through them is well done and on point.

The only downside of the film for me is that joy spends too much time wandering around the inner recesses of the brain. This film could have cut out 10 minutes and been more effective. Lastly, because the film is only 94 minutes, Disney/Pixar felt compelled to run a short called Lava prior to this film. Lava was an extremely poor setup to Inside Out. Lava, as a lead-in was way too schmaltzy and sappy and hurt watching the beginning of Inside Out.

Amy Poehler as Joy was perfectly upbeat and single-minded. Phyllis Smith as Sadness was dead on perfect. Her ability to apologize and yet continue to create more sadness was amazing. Bill Hader as Fear was funny, his expressions we’re well thought through. Mindy Kaling as Disgust was good in this more minor role. Lewis Black as Anger was the funniest. The way he would be immediately triggered because of an event was perfect. Dias as Riley was very good, especially when she was introducing herself to her new classmates. Pete Docter and Ronaldo Del Carmen both wrote and directed this excellent animated film. The only downside was the amount of time spent wandering around long term memory.

Overall:  This was an excellent film and provided a way to know how the brain could work.

Bad Teacher

First Hit: There are some very funny laugh-out-loud moments but in the end it was trite and less than satisfying.

 Elizabeth Halsey (played by Cameron Diaz) is a grade school teacher obsessed with finding a wealthy man to keep her in a particular lifestyle.

As the film starts, she has found him, however he breaks up with her and she has to go back to teaching. She drinks, smokes pot, and is scheming to find a man with money.

Coming back to teaching, her classes consist of turning on films for the kids to watch instead of actually teaching them anything. She thinks her biggest problem and the reason why she hasn’t nailed the right man is that she has small breasts, so she begins to manipulate her student’s parents for donations for classroom supplies (which she’ll keep), along with stealing items from student’s homes. With the extra money she hopes to have breast implants, catch her man, and quit teaching.

During this time she is also finds herself in competition for the affection of Scott, a long-term substitute teacher (played by Justin Timberlake) who has family money but is a nerdy spineless sort of guy. The competition is another teacher named Amy Squirrel (played by Lucy Punch) who is miss goody two shoes but also is a little twisted because something happened in 2008 (we never really find out).

Russell (played by Jason Segel) is the school’s gym teacher who has a crush on Elizabeth but, because he doesn't have money, she’s not interested in him, even though we all know he’s the best fit for her. The film is a set of scenes, which generally show how inappropriate Elizabeth’s actions are in being a schoolteacher.

The film plays off of stereotypes of kids and adults alike. We aren’t supposed to really care about anybody in this film, and here the film really succeeds. There is nothing to really care about. But there are some laugh-out-loud moments.

 Diaz does an adequate job of mugging through the non-caring school teacher bit and in the scenes where she is suppose to be sexy, she can be. But there isn’t much acting going on here. Segel is good as the steadfast easygoing guy who knows what he wants. Punch is, at times, perfect as the obnoxious obsessive tattletale snot of a teacher. Timberlake, makes a good nerd, but I couldn’t help but sense a “I’m just playing this role with a wink of an eye” sort of feeling from him. I did thoroughly enjoy his song for Amy. Phyllis Smith was perfect as Lynn the teacher who wants to be more and different than she is. She was the best actor in this film. Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg wrote this screenplay and it felt lightweight and only scraping the surface. Jake Kasdan directed this and given the screenplay I’m not sure what else he could have gotten out of it.

 Overall: Although some of the laughs are very out loud funny, this is a forgettable film.