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Review: Inside Out

By Christine Petralia

Image courtesy of Walt Disney Pictures

July 19, 2015

 

*May Contain Spoilers*

 

What goes on inside your mind? How do we make decisions? What makes us feel what we feel? How do we remember things? All of these questions are answered in Inside Out! Disney and Pixar have done it again. They turn something so complex into something that seems so logical, you wish you’d thought of it yourself. As explained, inside our mind lives five distinct emotions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Anger and Disgust. Amy Poehler does a great job at being the controlling emotion Joy, always making sure their human mind is happy, but not quite understanding what the other emotions are for, specifically Sadness (Phyllis Smith).

 

Riley is their human. Joy works with the other emotions navigating Riley’s life and emotions at the hands of a console inside her mind. Everything is going great and Joy is well, overjoyed, that Riley has lived a happy life. She explains that at the end of each waking cycle, all of the memories of the day are stored in long-term memory, with a few core memories sticking around in headquarters with the emotions. In addition to the core memories, there are specific islands that light up throughout Riley’s life, including family, friendship and hockey.

 

Things start to go awry when Riley moves from Minnesota to San Francisco. Not only do the emotions not know how to handle the situation, but it seems everything Sadness touches turns blue, turning happy memories into sad ones, upsetting Joy. While attempting to keep everything in order and the core memories away from Sadness, things break, and Joy, Sadness and the five core memories are sucked out of headquarters into long-term memory. They have to work together to try and get back before Riley’s mind essentially shuts down as Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black) and Disgust (Mindy Kaling) take over and try to do what Joy would do.

 

Along the way back, Joy and Sadness witness not only important memories, but the islands fall into the Memory Dump, thus removing them from Riley’s mind forever. As the pair navigate through Riley’s memories, they run into Bing Bong (Richard Kind), Riley’s imaginary friend from when she was little. He tells them the fastest way to headquarters is on the Train of Thought, and brings them through some shortcuts through Riley’s mind. The train gets derailed though, as another personality island falls into the memory dump. Joy attempts to use a recall tube to get back instead, but that breaks sending her into the dump too. While down there, Joy witnesses a sad memory turn into a happy memory and realizes Sadness’ true purpose: to alert Riley’s friends and family when she needs help. Together with Bing Bong’s rocket, Joy manages to get back up to long-term memory, find Sadness and get back to headquarters. And just in time, as the remaining emotions have decided to make Riley run away back to Minnesota. Sadness is able to save the day and with Joy they manage to make things right in Riley’s mind again, creating new core memories and new personality islands.

 

There is so much going on in this film, yet it’s so simple. It has a lot of great jokes for the adults, in true Disney/Pixar fashion, including what’s inside the minds of Riley’s parents. It’s a story about teamwork, as Joy learns she actually needs the other emotions, specifically Sadness, in order to make Riley truly happy. And it’s just an all-around feel-good film.

 

Stick around for the first few minutes of the credits as you can see inside the minds of a few of the characters in the film which you won’t want to miss.

 

After their leaders have met their unfortunate demise, the minions go off on their own, only to be depressed. Kevin, Bob and Stuart head out on their own to find the ultimate leader for the group. And where else to find a leader than Villain Con?

 

Vince and his crew give Ari something to do when he wants to not only star in the next big film, but direct it too. Things get crazy when the guys go over budget, forcing Ari to smooth things over with financers and get more funds.

Want more film reviews and more!  Check out the archive section for all of my writing!

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