Inside Out (2015)

User Review

• 

  Barneyonmovies

  8 / 10

  WHAT I LIKED: Most Pixar films use a high-concept idea to explore something about our real world, but few are as obviously allegorical as 'Inside Out.'
  
  The story is about an eleven year-old girl called Riley navigating a move to a new town and school. But it's set largely inside her head where her various emotions (joy, sadness, disgust, fear, anger) govern her every action and response from their "control room" upstairs. They have access to her memories, including "core memories," that link to her five "personality islands," but when she starts struggling to fit in, Joy and sadness get booted out to the "memory vault," and have to find their way back to the control centre whilst Riley's personality islands get replaced by horrible new core memories. That's all basically just a bunch of therapist's analogies, and the final act even ends with an appropriate lesson, as joy learns the importance of sadness, encouraging Riley to embrace rather than banish her true feelings to the corners of her mind.
  
  That's a neat arc, but mostly it appeals because it provides fruit for all kinds of observational humor about what goes on inside our heads. The arguments between the different emotions are hilarious. There's a funny sequence where we get a glimpse into the minds of Mum and Dad. There's a team of janitors discarding unused memories but keeping useless ones like commercial jingles. And there's even a hilarious tangent about dreams where Joy and Sadness visit a literal movie studio where a production team uses the day's experiences to put on a nightly show for Riley.
  
  WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE: It's sometimes hard to engage with Riley's central arc because she's only a framing device for the characters inside her head.
  
  VERDICT: 'Inside Out,' is one massive analogy for what goes on inside an eleven year-old girl's head, and the result is highly playful and amusing.

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