Inside Out (2015)

6.35pm, Saturday, RTÉ One

“You’ll be in charge of the console, keeping Riley happy all day long” Not only is this Pixar gem a delightful coming-of-age tale about the emotions experienced by a young girl; it’s also a hugely important drama that will encourage conversations between young people and their parents about minding one’s mental health. While most movies unfold through the eyes of their central character, Inside Out unfolds within the head (literally) of its protagonist. Riley is a young girl whose behaviour is micromanaged by ve principal emotions – Joy, Anger, Disgust, Fear and Sadness.

At a key point in this 11-year-old’s life (her family has just uprooted to the big city), two of these emotions, Joy and Sadness, go missing in Riley’s psyche while searching for her core memories. The stage is set for a race-against-time story, particularly with so many emotional challenges facing the young girl, not least the fact that puberty is looming on the horizon.

When it comes to tapping into our emotions, few are as adept as Pixar legend Pete Docter whose writing credits ( Up, Wall-E, Monsters Inc) are among the very best that the studio has to o er. With Inside Out, he has come up with a brilliant premise for a movie, one which people of a certain age will remember from the Numskulls cartoon strip in The Beano. Docter and his team have eshed out these core emotions with striking visuals and a ne voice cast (notably Amy Poehler as Joy and Phyllis Smith as Sadness). In short, this is a delightful, sumptuous, important piece of lm-making.