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by jerome-jh 1952 days ago
Limiting my complain to recent Pixar movies: I think Coco, Soul and Inside Out are fairly obvious and not multi-layer. Definitely they talk of "difficult" subjects to kids: death, depression, regrets about ones life. They are not much fun either and the story is rather weak: often predictable, déjà-vu moments (Soul and Inside Out are strangely very similarly built with a meta-world in both), repetitive loop of slow and fast action scenes.

Japanese anime also talks about difficult subjects and IMO does it much better. Thinking of "Okko's Inn": much less predictable, some funny and tense scenes, and yet not shocking for children and quite emotional for parents (OK maybe our smallest daughter woke up and came in her parents bed the following night but she has not been traumatized for life :)

Since I am engaged in a reckless defense of Frozen in other posts: I think this movie is multi-layered. It talks of women and power, femicide, love vs friendship, sisterhood, although it is packaged in a story suitable for the smallest children as its success showed. The story is definitely not predictable from the start and has the power of myths. Of course Disney is well known for its ability to adapt old myths and tales.

As for older Pixar: The Incredibles was fun and multi-layered, Ratatouille was fun, Wall-E was great ...
1 comments
willismichael 1952 days ago
Frozen? Elsa makes absolutely no proactive decisions for the entire movie. She is completely reactive.
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jerome-jh 1952 days ago
Well that's a valid analysis: she's afraid of her power, both real and magical.

A quite strange Japanese anime I recently watched with my kids was "Ginga-tetsudô no yoru" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089206/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1). I warn you: it is really slow and dreamlike, and is about death. One daughter slept during the movie while the younger one watched till the end. The morning after we were discussing about the movie during breakfast. I love that! Never happened with a Pixar movie: they are just too obvious. The analysis is made for you. And for the more recent ones they are not even fun. Of course they are beautiful and polished but too slick for me.

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