Inside

The ambitious concept for Inside Out, the latest animation from Pixar is undoubtedly brilliantly thought out and executed, although you do wonder what the young ones will make of it. It probably doesn’t matter because they’ll be caught up in the bright colours, fast-paced action and appealing characters.

The 13 year-old who came along with me appreciated the nuances of the plot but a couple of much younger kids who I quizzed afterwards had only a very basic idea of what had happened. That’s not surprising considering most of the story takes place inside a girl’s head. Riley is the girl in question and we’re privy to all of her thought patterns thanks to the personified emotions of Joy (voiced by Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling).

We meet Riley when she’s just a baby and most of her emotions revolve around the simple things in life, moving up to when she’s a little girl and enjoying activities like ice skating. Then Riley’s world is shaken when her dad takes a job in another city and she has to move. She also happens to be 12 years old and starting to express her independence more, with her emotions in a constant state of flux and upheaval. 

Inside Riley’s head, a major crisis occurs when the ever-optimistic Joy, and Sadness – who really can’t help touching Riley’s core memories and tainting them – get sucked out of Headquarters and have to find their way back so that Riley’s emotions don’t become unmanageable and she never feels happy again. This means having to navigate her subconscious and its many levels, hopping aboard a literal train of thought, meeting her childhood imaginary friend, Bing Bong (Richard Kind) in the deepest recesses of her mind, and having an encounter with her abstract thought. Heady stuff! 

Inside Out is definitely a film that has something for all ages, and parents will laugh, nod in recognition and might even shed a tear or two in the same way they did in Pixar’s other emotion-tweaking films such as Toy Story 2 and 3, and Up. And as so often happens with these things, some of the funniest stuff is saved for the closing credits where we see the emotions of various other characters. 

By Vicki Englund