ALL YOU NEED IS LOBE

It’s refreshing to see a film that isn’t afraid to tackle the big questions. How does a memory begin? What is the role of melancholy and nostalgia in a happy life? Where do bad ideas come from?

But come on. Any two-bit summer blockbuster can provide insight into those head-scratchers. I’m pretty sure Paul Blart 2 has a handle on the last one already. Inside Out goes for the REALLY big questions. Like how it is you’ll never forget that radio jingle you heard as a child. Or why your cat suddenly, and with no apparent external stimuli, decides to freak out. It’s also the fist kids’ movie to use the phrase “non-objective fragmentation.”

But that’s because it’s not really a kids’ movie — or rather, it’s not just a kids’ movie. It operates on two levels simultaneously. For youngsters, it’s the story of 11-year-old Riley (Kaitlyn Dias), whose life gets upended when her parents uproot her from Minnesota and move to San Francisco — and not the cool, anime San Fran of Big Hero 6, either.

Riley has to make sense of her new environment with the help of five primary emotions that live, John Malkovich-style, in her noodle. Leader of the pack — ego, if you will — is Joy (Amy Poehler), with the body of Tinkerbell and the soul of Peter Pan. Keeping Riley safe are Fear (Bill Hader) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling). Balancing out the brainpan are Phyllis Smith as Sadness and Lewis Black as Anger, the last a so-perfect casting choice, it could only have been bested if they had hired Christoph Waltz as Schadenfreude.

Older brains will also get a kick out of the workplace dynamics at play — these five put the gang in basal ganglia! Things get complicated when Joy and Sadness, who naturally don’t see eye-to-eye, get accidentally transported to Riley’s long-term memory and have to make the perilous journey back to HQ while the others try to keep their girl on an even keel without them. But if your own long-term storage includes first-hand recall of the ’ 80s, say, or the birth of a child, be prepared for an even deeper, more immersive experience.

Inside Out’s writers/directors Pete Docter (Up) and Ronaldo Del Carmen, bolstered by two additional scribes, Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley, have taken apart Riley’s 11-year-old psyche and put it back together with primary colours and a touch of whimsy. Thus the dream-production centre of her brain — which looks, not surprisingly, like a major Hollywood studio — includes coming-attraction posters for such sleeper hits as I Can Fly and I’m Falling for a Very Long Time Into a Dark Pit.

There’s an actual train of thought that shuttles randomly through the cerebellum (woe betide those who lose it), and workers who maintain Riley’s labyrinthine long-term memory, which resembles an endless library stacked with bowling balls, each colour-coded to the emotion of the recollection. There are also “islands of personality,” devoted to concepts such as honesty, family and hockey, Riley’s favourite sport. And her developing brain has a new production centre working on an imaginary boyfriend; to keep him inaccessible, he’s from Canada.

Watching Joy and Sadness muddle their way through this phantasmagoric landscape is great fun, but let your own mind wander and you may find it pondering more than just why the islands of personality have such a heavy-industry, oil-refinery look to them. You may recall your own earliest memories — happy, sad, tinged with embarrassment or nostalgia — or you may contemplate the ones you’re forming these days, in your own head and others’. We are powered by emotions, but we ARE memories.

And then, just as suddenly, the movie pulls you into its absurdist humour again. A peek inside the brains of Riley’s parents (voiced by Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) finds that hers looks like the set of The View, while his could be mistaken for a scene from Anchorman. Riley’s mind, meanwhile, contains an unusual yet oddly familiar childhood mental construct, and unexpectedly deep reserves of sacrifice that give new meaning to the term self-help.

Joy, the engine of the film, is a joy to watch. In closeup, she resembles the bubbling surface of a star, complete with flares. And watching Joy deal with sadness was a truly moving moment, although I had to pull back from wondering whether the sprite was ruled by her own quintet of emotions. There’s a limit to how deep you should let yourself fall into Inside Out. But it will certainly make you laugh, cry, seethe, recoil and freeze — in all the best ways, of course.