Despicable Me - What am I missing?

Why does everyone love this film so much?  I guess the answer lies in the little yellow indestructible goblins who bumble their way around the film helping out the comically evil super villain Gru carry out his bonkers plans.  But if you happen to no find the "Minions" funny, what else is there?

Despicable Me is set in a Looney Tunes cartoon world, where dastardly villains have to apply to the bank of evil for funding and people can have missiles shot in their faces, emerging only with a reddened face and little birds flying around their heads.  We follow the trials of the super villain Gru, as he tries to prove himself the most dastardly of all the villains by defeating the young upstart Vector.  After Vector steals the Pyramids of Giza, Gru decides that the only way to prove to the world he is the baddest of all the bad is to steal... The Moon.

So then we are set for silliness on overdrive.  Gru has all sorts of evil tricks and tools for stealing anything and everything, Vector has all sorts of ingenious ways of keeping Gru out of his evil lair.  All the while Gru is fending off the loving attentions of a trio of orphan girls he is trying to use to get inside Vector's lair.  Will they tug at Gru's heartstrings and get him to find his soul?  Does Gru's soul really lie in his thievery?  Does any of this matter - isn't the point to watch the Minions and chuckle at their silliness?

The main issue here is that I just don't find this sort of slapstick Looney Tunes cartoonery funny any more - and if where I do find it funny it is hard to find it funny for 100 minutes.  Yes the Minions are silly.  And yes they are funny with their silliness and funny speech and squishy indestructibility.  But that can't be all this film has going for it.  I guess maybe I'm just not quite the audience Despicable Me was aiming for.  It makes perfect sense that a sequel was made, and that there was a subsequent film focusing entirely on the Minions.  Universal Studios have stumbled on to something that has touched the current zeitgeist with these babbling yellow creations.  Good luck to them and their marketing strategies to milk as much profit as possible out of them, I shan't be handing them any more of my cash.

Inside Out - psychology through colour

Pixar.  The very name has become a byword for excitement in the film-going community whenever a new release from this studio is announced.  Since being taken over by Disney, the studio that brought you Toy Story and the rest appears to have been mostly left to its own devices in terms of coming up with new material.  And why wouldn't Disney want to let them carry on with a creative studio that's made millions over the last 20 years since digital animation came of age?  Disney hasn't made a shit tonne of money over the years by being bad at business.

The latest is Inside Out, a modern interpretation of the Numbskulls in which we follow the little elves running the show inside the brain of an 11 year old girl named Riley.  The film presents a beautiful vision of the way that emotions form inside our minds, via a number of brightly-coloured elves who operate the controls inside our heads and form memories represented by similarly-coloured balls.  The major emotions (Yellow = Joy, Red = Anger, Green = Disgust, Purple = Fear, Blue = Sadness) each play their part, but Joy is in charge.  When the family move to San Francisco and their world is thrown into turmoil, the elves react by trying to re-enforce the joy that Riley felt as she grew up.  Eventually though, they come to learn that joy is tempered and reinforced by the other emotions.  Joy and Sadness go on a journey of discovery through Riley's subconscious, coming to the realistation they emotions are much more complex than they thought, By the end of the film Riley is generating multi-coloured 'emotion balls', and the control panel of the elves is greatly expanded.  Just in time for puberty.

This is what Pixar has always done best.  It's a story that makes use of metaphor to explore growing up, complete with themes that kids and their parents will each love on different levels.  One could criticise the film for over-simplifying the development process when growing up, but this is what all metaphor does.  Inside Out is visually arresting, inventive, emotional and absolutely in line with the ambiance of Pixar's classics.  Have a go.  Have a watch.