Pixar's films, at their best, are wonderful not just for their inventiveness, or humour, or animation, but for how they make you think. Toys coming to life, monsters under the bed, or stories told from the point of view of bugs, fish, cars -- theirs is the stuff of a billion children's overactive imaginations. So it's fitting that Inside Out, the studio's latest, returns to that tradition with its most universal and simple idea yet: going inside the child's mind itself.
Inside Out follows Riley, a 12-year-old girl dismayed when her family packs up and moves from snowy Minnesota to San Francisco. (It's never made explicit, but talk of investors, growing stubble and scruffy T-shirts suggests her Dad works at a tech start up.) All that's slightly beside the point, because we see comparatively little of Riley: the majority of the action takes place inside her mind, which is populated by the effervescent Joy (Amy Poehler), mopey Sadness (Phyllis Smith), hot-headed Anger (Lewis Black), gangly Fear (Bill Hader) and trendy Disgust (Mindy Kaling). Think the Beano's Numskulls, but brighter coloured. Like the crew of the Enterprise, this fivesome control Riley's thoughts and behaviour, with the ultimate aim of creating memories, little glowing orbs that roll in after each new experience before being whisked off to Long Term or -- in the case of a few formative experiences -- becoming Core Memories, which generate the all-important Islands Of Personality. As a child, Joy is used to ruling the roost, before the dislocations of moving home sets off a crisis, as Joy and Sadness are zapped off into the depths of Riley's mind, leaving only Anger, Fear and Disgust in charge. Has adolescence ever been summed up so neatly?
This introduction is whizzed through in an inventive few opening minutes and remarkable for its clarity and simplicity; director Pete Docter has a history of great openings – his last film was the Oscar-winning Up -- and this is similarly successful in its set-up. From there we're off on a journey through Joy's mind taking in such delights as Imaginationland, Abstract Thought and the caves of the Subconscious. Docter consulted real psychologists on the story, and it shows -- Inside Out's dealings with complexity of emotion and behaviour is immensely clever, and rarely misses a beat. The script is funny too, ranging from broad slapstick to smarter gags for the adults. But most of all, the film's secret is in its universality, finding delightfully simple gags in the everyday (in a delightful sequence, we discover the reason you can't get that annoyingly catchy tune out of your head).
As with Up however, the real power of Inside Out isn't in its humour, but in its maturity; the second half of the film is much more downbeat, with certain scenes that will leave even the hardest-hearted reaching for tissues. (I can only imagine how devastating it would be if you have kids; Docter was inspired to write the film by his daughter's adolescence, and there's a palpable sense of loss that lingers long afterwards.)
It's not perfect; by modern standards Inside Out is refreshingly lacking any excess, but zipping from scene to scene you're occasionally left wanting more; more jokes, more emotion, more explanation -- particularly during a speedy denouement. (On a minor note, it's also a little tiresome, a week after Ant-Man, to see yet another film set in San Francisco.) It's a shame we're mostly confined to Riley's mind, as when the film does veer inside the heads of others, it finds some of its best moments (it's worth staying for the credits sequence for more of these). You get the feeling there is ample ground there for a sequel.
But ultimately, when the credits roll, and your smiles fade, you can't help but be left with a bittersweet feeling. That's the thing: like childhood, no Pixar film lasts forever.
Inside Out is out now.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
