Synopsis
A young girl name Riley is uprooted from her Minnesota backyard with her parents and moved to San Francisco, California to begin a new life, as her father begins a new venture. Change in environment, loss of friends and pre-teen insecurity cause her emotions to go haywire — literally. Each emotion, Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust, do their best to keep Riley in check during her grueling life change. Halfway through the process, though, Joy and Sadness get in a power struggle with memories and go missing. The remaining trio is left in charge of Riley, which causes all sorts of additional emotional issues. Joy and Sadness must find their way back to ‘Headquarters’ before Riley makes the wrong emotional choice.
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The geniuses at Pixar have put together and personified human emotion, which is brilliant. Merely the idea of doing so opens up a door into a building filled with possibilities. What’s interesting is how Pixar and directors Pete Docter and Ronald Del Carmen treated it and organized said possibilities. They could have just made it a one-dimensional affair where you were pulling cheap humor from each emotion, but what they created with Inside Out is more complicated and incredible emotional journey (no pun intended), which is far deeper than you might imagine.
Without further delay, let’s get right into it.
The first act does a quick and caring job of introducing Riley (Kaitlyn Dias) and her first emotion, Joy (Amy Poehler). Visually, Pixar creates a silent bond between the new born baby and her happiness, which is touching to watch. The film quickly shifts to introducing the second emotion, Sadness (Phyllis Smith), who is there at the beginning of Riley’s life as well. As the act progresses, and Riley’s life progresses, we see Anger (Lewis Black), Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) crop up in a main building in Riley’s mind called ‘Headquarters’. Clever, eh?
The first act does a great job with just spending time developing each character, making them much more than just an emotion. The act pairs each emotion with a moment in Riley’s life and builds this branched dichotomy between Riley’s development and how the emotions come into play with it. The setup for Riley’s first 11 years of life is genius, as Joy’s connection with Riley is set in stone perfectly in an overbearing manner. That’s an important part to this story because seeing that close relationship between the two only magnifies what is predictably going to happen as Riley is introduced into her pre-teen stage of life, which is act two.
Act two begins as Riley is yanked from her Minnesota life and forced to go west to San Francisco. If the stress of moving wasn’t enough strain on her fragile emotions, a bevy of mishaps with the moving company, at school and communicating with her parents starts to take its toll on Riley, as well as Joy. Inside Riley’s mind, Joy is finding it tough to keep Sadness out of the way and finding it even tougher to keep the happiness in Riley’s life alive and kicking. In addition, Riley starts to lose her favorite types of life styles — being goofy, being honest and having a good relationship with her parents. These are represented by islands, which eventually start crashing down around Headquarters, as Riley starts losing them. If all this chaos wasn’t enough, Sadness starts to accidentally, and almost obsessively begin to change happy memories (represented as crystal balls) into sad memories that keep building. Of course, everything comes to head when Joy and Sadness begin fighting, which leads them to accidentally get launched out of Headquarters and into the unknown regions of Riley’s mind. A good majority of act two is Joy and Sadness trying to find a way back to Riley before the other emotions do something incredibly stupid.
Act two is a beast. It throws a lot of things at you and at times it seems like a disorganized mess. That might seem like a mean critique of the story, but read that sentence again. Think about it, when you’re frazzled in life, what happens to your mind? It becomes a disorganized mess. That is the genius of this film, as you can forgive and even praise the disorganization of the second act because this is probably how a panicky mind personified would act in a moment of crisis. It’s absolute brilliance how the second act is organized in a disorganized manner, handled and how it connects to the third act of the film. Directors Pete Docter and Ronald Del Carmen really make the situation as messy as possible for Joy, Sadness and Riley. They make sure the audience is as lost as all parties involved and at the same time they explain how sensible it is to be that way at that point in the story. This technique and process is an attention grabber in a sort of ‘edge-of-your-seat’ way. They do a great job of building that parallel disaster between the emotions and Riley, as she is going through some tough times. The climax of act two, the point where the build reaches its zenith emotionally, is when Riley breaks down in front of her new classmates and loses it. It’s tough to watch, but beautiful at the same time. Anyway, the directors do a great job with keeping that disorganized train of thought and story throughout the second act.
All is not bleak in act two, though, as the story introduces some comedy to balance out the emotional dip it presents. The first bit to calm your mind is the introduction to Riley’s lost imaginary friend, Bing Bong (Richard Kind), an elephant-cat-dog-hobo. He is a strong character that keeps the comedy coming in the face of potential emotional tragedy (literally, figuratively). I won’t tell you what happens to Bing Bong ultimately, but I will say enjoy him while you can. He acts as a strong bit of balance for the film.
Act three of Inside Out can only be described as the calm after the storm. Act three brings it home and will tug at your heart strings beautifully. I don’t want to give away how things conclude with Inside Out, just know that emotionally it’s up there with the ending of Toy Story 3 (not joking — and I don’t take that comparison lightly). Personally, I had to fight back tears at the end because I’m a parent and I’m currently seeing one of my own daughters go through similar emotions like Riley. Sadly, but profoundly, an emotional casualty of the film was my eight-year old daughter, who was in tears by the end. And don’t take that the wrong way. This is a sign that this film grabbed onto my daughter’s emotions, attention and pulled her into the story, which is what you want a good story to do. The third act really doesn’t hold back in terms of what an 11 year old Riley is going through and thinking about. It doesn’t play around when explaining that the things people love the most when they’re rounding that pre-teen curve can sometimes simply fade away or get lost in the transition. It’s a beautiful sadness and one every kid is going to eventually go through. Pixar captures this transition in a heartfelt and touching way. It’s almost tragically perfect.
Again, you will be emotionally invested and somewhat exhausted by the conclusion.
Before this review is wrapped up, I have to give kudos to the actors/actresses for knocking this film out of the ballpark. All parties involved, especially the emotions, were phenomenal. Pixar chose the right people to voice over the various emotions and they didn’t disappoint. Excellent work.