Part 4: When Sexism is More Than Just Bad Table Manners Turning Inside Out Upside Down

New here? Check out the table of contents or start at Part 1. Wondering why this review is so critical? Well, everyone else has already written plenty about why Inside Out is awesome, so I'm going to be focusing on aspects that need some more attention.

Okay, everybody...buckle up: we've got to talk about the dinner table scene.

Oh, no! NOT THAT!

Let me just say at the outset that this is an extremely ambitious concept to attempt, and Pixar has my genuine respect for trying something as conceptually complicated as this scene: you've got to get inside three people's heads, so instead of having three characters interacting in one location, you've got eighteen characters (counting each human separately from zir emotions), ten of which the audience has never met before, in four locations, in two of which the audience has never been before. I get that you have to rely on shorthand at some point. HOWEVER, there's good shorthand (e.g., the first 10 minutes of Up) and then there's lazy sexist stereotypes. I found myself sitting in the theater saying to myself "Well, I guess they had to dumb this down so people could follow it..." and if a viewer is consciously aware of your filmmaking constraints and trying to make excuses while watching the movie in realtime (the FIRST time I saw it, I might add!), your ambitious scene has failed.

I'm giving this scene a participation award.

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Snow White's To-Die-For Apple Pie Recipe

IMPORTANT: start this recipe **at least** one day ahead!

Just in time for Thanksgiving, I wanted to share with you all a foolproof recipe for the most delicious, beautiful, guaranteed-to-delight-and-impress-your-friends-and-relatives apple pie you have ever tasted:

Tastes even better than it looks, might I add...

Let's start out by describing exactly what the perfect apple pie IS NOT, and then I'll share the amazing techniques that fix all those problems and gives you rich, flavorful goodness and a perfect texture.

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Part 3: Has Anyone Else Noticed That Riley's Parents Kind Of Suck? Turning Inside Out Upside Down

New here? Check out the table of contents or start at Part 1. Wondering why this review is so critical? Well, everyone else has already written plenty about why Inside Out is awesome, so I'm going to be focusing on aspects that need some more attention.

So far this series has discussed problems that have implications in how Inside Out relates to our larger society, but that don't detract from the movie's own internal worldbuilding. Today we'll look at some storytelling laziness and associated plotholes, most of which boil down to one simple fact that the movie doesn't seem to understand about its characters:

Riley's father and (to a lesser extent) mother are pretty shitty parents.

C'mon, we're Disney parents and we're alive--what more do you want?!

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