Manic Pixie Dream Joy welcomes Frazzled Rock!
Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: Pixar made an entire movie about feels feeling feels! As someone who responds well to films that probe deeper emotions than “wheeeee”, I named Pete Doctor’s Inside Out my favorite film of 2015 – against the heavyweight competition of Creed, Spotlight, and Fury Road — after its in-depth examination of baseline emotions via cutesy anthropomorphization, as well as its complicated theses about the importance of sadness and the beginning of the end of childhood, wrecked me in the theater twice, back in that bygone era when I’d go see a film in theaters more than once if I thought it was that awesome.
Nine years later, Pixar has the blemished scorecard of any ordinary animation studio. I’ve had such mixed reactions that I only saw one of their last five films in theaters (and regretted giving in to the cash-grab). Nevertheless, I agreeably let them redeem Inside Out‘s stack of goodwill chips and left the house to catch the new Inside Out 2 while my inner voices of Skepticism and Hope squabbled with each other like Siskel and Ebert. Each of them scored points off the other, leaving me wrecked and nitpicky.
Midlife Crisis Crossover! 