Inside Out *** 1/2
Dir: Pete Docter (co-director Ronnie Del Carmen)
Starring: (voices of) Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Kaitlyn Dias, Bill Hader, Mindy Kaling, Lewis Black, Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan, Richard Kind

The best Pixar movies have often done a wonderful job of exploring the human condition in the guise of animated features for the young ‘uns, tackling subjects both personal (Toy Story 3, Up) and political (Wall-E) but never at the expense of creativity (the ode to Chaplin and Keaton in Wall-E was brilliantly inventive) or emotion (the two montage sequences in Up are as moving as anything put up on the big screen - live or animated.) In the same vein, Inside Out looks at what makes us humans tick as personified in the shape of five animated emotions - joy, sadness, fear, disgust and anger – battling for supremacy inside an individual’s brain.

Our story revolves around the 11-year old Riley (voiced by Kaitlyn Dias) as she moves with her parents (Diane Lane, Kyle MacLachlan) from Minnesota to San Fransisco. Change can be difficult for anybody let alone an 11-year old girl and it’s no different for Riley. So when Joy (Amy Poehler) and Sadness (a terrific Phyllis Smith) find themselves lost in the backwaters of Riley’s brain (rather than in the command centre of the frontal lobe), Fear (Bill Hader), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and most prominently Anger (an appropriately and hilariously cast Lewis Black) end up making all sorts of wrong decisions. So Joy and Sadness have to navigate their way back through the maze of the Long Term Memory Banks and the land of Abstract Thought with the help of Riley’s almost forgotten imaginary childhood friend Bing Bong (Richard Kind) before Riley ends up doing something that she’ll regret.

Inside Out is a charmer, sweetly capturing that time in our lives when we start to leave our childhoods behind. It has its amusing moments too. It isn’t quite at the level of the afore-mentioned Up or Toy Story 3 but it is still rewarding enough.

Cut to chase: Sweet, elegiac, charming.

ABCD2 **
Dir: Remo D’Souza
Starring: Varun Dhawan, Shraddha Kapoor, Prabhudeva, Lauren Gottlieb, Raghav Juyal

ABCD2 (or Anybody Can Dance 2) is the sequel to the surprise hit from 2013 and like most sequels it tries to go bigger. Director Remo D’Souza and star Prabhudeva are still on hand (as is Lauren Gottlieb, though playing a different character than the one she essayed in the first movie) but the movie also has rising stars Varun Dhawan and Shraddha Kapoor in the cast to add to its box-office appeal. The locale also moves from India to Las Vegas, USA as an Indian dance group attempts to regain its lost reputation at an international competition where they have to topple an arrogant German team from its perch as reigning champion (if you’ve seen the recent Pitch Perfect 2, the plot should sound familiar.)

But bigger isn’t necessarily better. Apart from the hackneyed plot there is also the predictable India shining
flag-waving and the characterisation is skimpy at best. Despite the two and a half hour playing time the screenplay hardly devotes any time to developing the characters or allowing them to demonstrate any kind of depth. There is a perfunctory love triangle and a flimsy bit about the true intentions of the group’s choreographer, Vishnu (Prabhudeva) but the movie is all about the dancing. And there is certainly a lot of dancing. You really don’t expect anything else considering the movie’s title and some of the dance numbers are pretty good but after 150 minutes a lot of it also becomes a bit mind-numbing.

Cut to chase: Lots of dancing, not enough plot.

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