GREAT HEAD TRIP
Terrific ‘Inside Out’ is an emotional mind-blower
‘Inside Out” is the year’s best film so far. And after you see it, you’ll say that’s a no-brainer.
This deep, rich, perceptive and funny adventure is Pixar’s greatest achievement since “Toy Story 3,” with the emotional impact we’ve come to expect from their computeranimated marvels.
Within the brain of an 11-year-old girl named Riley, five emotions sit at the controls of “headquarters”: ebullient Joy (Amy Poehler), mopey Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling).
They’re responsible for taking new memories, which look like shiny orbs, and putting them either into long-term storage or the Core Memory area.
Yet Sadness takes a prominent role after Riley and her mom and dad move from Minnesota to San Francisco. When Joy and Sadness get drawn up into the tube where memories go, it corresponds with Riley’s sorrow at leaving her friends, hockey team and home behind.
To get back to headquarters, Joy and Sadness travel through the Long-Term Memory corridors while keeping Sadness from touching more memories. To help, they have Bing Bong (Richard Kind), Riley’s onetime imaginary friend. But every second counts, as Riley’s “islands of personality” are crumbling into the chasm-like Memory Dump, from which nothing can be recalled.
The story’s complex, but Pixar knows how to make sophisticated notions accessible and fun. Director Pete Docter does something similar to what “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” did: send us someplace where concepts like Abstract Thought or Imagination are presented literally. Brain-fold-like pink steps lead down to the subconscious, and when Riley gets an idea, there’s a collection of light bulbs that go into the control board.
But there’s another, deeper thing going on here. “Inside Out” is about how joy and sadness — the emotions, not the characters — need each other, and how growing up is an often melancholy process of recognizing that who we once were isn’t who we are now. By wanting to go back to Minnesota, Riley is unconsciously grasping one last time for the younger self she used to be.
As the voice in her head, Poehler’s Joy is a delightfully perky pixie, looking on the bright side of things until, heartbreakingly, she sees how essential sadness is. Smith is a funny frump whose Droopy Dog rhythms are also comforting. Black is hilarious as the hair-trigger temper, while Kaling and Hader add verbally limber humor to the Limbic system.
Technically, the film is full of brainstorms. The visual flourish of places like Dreamland productions (a mental movie studio where dreams are made) and Abstract Thought — where things become Picassolike and two-dimensional — is wittily dynamic. Joy’s skin shimmers with a hint of iridescence. And Michael Giacchino’s terrific score captures wells of feeling in a simple piano theme that eventually fires up and soars.
Much of this masterpiece may take place within one kid’s head, but it is about all of us.