Psycho's Movie Reviews #250: Inside Out (2015)

Inside Out is a 2015 American computer-animated film directed by Pete Docter, who wrote the script with Meg LeFauve and Josh Cooley. It stars the voices of Amy Poehler, Phyllis Smith, Richard Kind, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, Mindy Kaling, Kaitlyn Dias, Diane Lane, and Kyle MacLachlan. The film follows five personified emotions: Joy (Poehler), Sadness (Smith), Fear (Hader), Anger (Black), and Disgust (Kaling). Inside the mind, they lead a young girl named Riley (Dias) through life as she and her parents (Lane and MacLachlan) adjust to their new surroundings after moving from Minnesota to San Francisco.

Docter conceived Inside Out in late 2009 after noticing changes in his daughter's personality as she grew older. Based on Docter and Ronnie del Carmen's remembrances, the emotions were repurposed for use in the film. During production, the filmmakers consulted psychologists in order to achieve greater accuracy in their portrayal of the mind. Development on Inside Out lasted for five and a half years, on an approximate $175 million budget, and the film faced production difficulties, including story changes.

Inside Out debuted out of competition at the 68th Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2015, and was released in theatres in the United States on June 19. It was well-received by the media for its craftsmanship, screenplay, subject matter, plot, and vocal performances (particularly those of Poehler, Smith, Kind, and Black). Organizations like the National Board of Review and American Film Institute named Inside Out as one of the top 10 films of 2015. It earned $858.8 million worldwide, finishing its theatrical run as the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2015. Inside Out led the 88th Academy Awards season with two nominations (winning one), and received numerous accolades.

Plot

Within the mind of a young girl named Riley are the basic emotions that control her actions: Joy, Sadness, Fear, Disgust, and Anger. Her experiences become memories, stored as colored orbs, which are sent into long-term memory each night. The aspects of five most important "core memories" within her personality incorporate the form of floating islands. Joy acts as the leader, and she and the rest of the emotions try to limit Sadness's influence.

At the age of 11, Riley moves from Minnesota to San Francisco for her father's new job. She at first has poor experiences; the new house is cramped and old, her father hardly has any time for her, a local pizza parlor only serves pizza topped with broccoli (which Riley dislikes), and the moving van with their belongings ends up in Texas and will not arrive for weeks. On Riley's first day at her new school, Sadness retroactively turns joyous memories sad, which causes Riley to cry in front of her class and creates a sad core memory. Joy tries to dispose of it by using a vacuum tube but accidentally knocks the other core memories loose during a struggle with Sadness, disabling the personality islands. Joy, Sadness, and the core memories are sucked out of Headquarters.

In Joy and Sadness's absence, Anger, Fear, and Disgust are forced to take control of Riley with disastrous results, distancing Riley from her parents, friends, and hobbies. Because of this, her personality islands gradually crumble and fall into the "Memory Dump", where memories are forgotten. Finally, Anger resolves to return to Minnesota, believing it will restore her happiness.

While navigating the vast long-term memory area, Joy and Sadness encounter Bing Bong, Riley's childhood imaginary friend, who suggests riding the "train of thought" back to Headquarters. The three, after extreme inconvenience caused by the islands' dissolution, eventually catch the train but it halts when Riley falls asleep, then derails entirely with the collapse of another island. Desperate, Joy abandons Sadness and tries to ride a "recall tube" back to the Headquarters but the ground below the tube collapses, breaking and sending Joy and Bing Bong plunging into the Memory Dump. After discovering a sad memory that turned happy in Riley's parents' comfort to her, Joy understands Sadness's purpose: alerting others when Riley is emotionally overwhelmed and needs help. Joy and Bing Bong try to use Bing Bong's old wagon rocket, which gets energy when the rider sings, to escape the Memory Dump, but are unable to fly high enough due to their combined weight. On their last attempt, Bing Bong jumps out to allow Joy to escape as he fades away.

Joy reunites with Sadness and they return to Headquarters, but arrive too late as Anger's idea has disabled the console, rendering Riley apathetic as she boards a bus to Minnesota. To the surprise of the others, Joy hands control of the console to Sadness, who is able to reactivate it and prompt Riley to return to her new home. As Sadness reinstalls the core memories, transforming them from happy to sad, Riley tearfully confesses to her parents that she misses her old life. Her parents comfort her and admit they also miss Minnesota. Joy and Sadness work the console together, creating a new core memory consisting of happiness and sadness; a new island forms, representing Riley's acceptance of her new life in San Francisco.

A year later, Riley has adapted to her new home, made new friends, and returned to her old hobbies while acquiring a few new ones. Inside Headquarters, her emotions admire Riley's new personality islands, and all work together on a newly expanded console with room for them all.

Production

Development

The development of Inside Out began in late 2009, when director Pete Docter felt anxiety about his adolescent daughter Elie's progressing introversion. Docter approached Ronnie del Carmen to become a co-director, and he eventually accepted the offer, citing his "accidental" animation work. They remembered their past experiences and histories to repurpose emotions in the film; aiming to depict them with strong, caricatured personalities. Docter had been impressed on making it after del Carmen determined most of the film's aspects were narrow. The directors and producer Jonas Rivera researched the mind with the help of psychologist Paul Ekman and the University of California, Berkeley professor of psychology Dacher Keltner, while Pixar animator Dan Holland and his team allowed some psychologists and specialists to accurately develop the film's story.

In Keltner and Ekman's opinion, they emphasized the emotions' formation of social lives and interactions, which can moderate themselves. While Keltner focused on sadness that strengthens relationships, Ekman identified seven emotions with "universal signals" early: anger, fear, sadness, disgust, joy, contempt, and surprise. Therefore, Docter removed surprise from Inside Out after he corroborated that it and fear were similar; contempt was abandoned also by the filmmakers. Two joy's initial names, happiness and an unrelated optimism, were renamed as such. A total of 26 emotions, including irritation, envy, greed, gloom, despair, depression, love, schadenfreude, ennui, shame, embarrassment, and hope, were considered for the film before reducing to their possible value. Its finalized, streamlined scope featured a condensed story and the emotions' traits.

Chief creative officer John Lasseter offered little input for Inside Out due to his focus on restructuring Walt Disney Animation Studios, and it was the first Pixar film without involvement of co-founder and former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who died in 2011. Executives at Disney and Pixar were positive at Docter's proposal, but acknowledged it was difficult to advertise. The film spent five and a half years in development, with an approximate $175 million budget. Docter and production designer Ralph Eggleston described this an intricate and lengthy process. As such, first-time directors were unlikely eligible for the film's work.

Writing

In 2010, Docter and the filmmaking team met to discuss aspects about Inside Out, including its setting, rules, and reels. Docter then recruited a story team to develop the story's plotline; their main challenge was to deal with its multi-layered technique. To promote diverse input, half of the story team were women, at a time when the animation industry consisted largely of men. Although the film's focus was about a girl, research found that females age 11 to 17 were more attuned to expressions and emotions than younger girls. Docter considered the lead emotion as female, since Riley had the same gender. Other emotions were assigned between male and female. Del Carmen influenced the film's story development based around his upbringing, and preferred the idea of hockey's popularity in Minnesota, becoming a core concept. Docter also discarded an initial idea about Riley falling into a deep depression.

Creation of storyboards for Inside Out took two to three years, and included seven to eight screenings for Pixar's "brain trust", a small group of creative leaders who oversee all film development at Pixar. After several screenings and suggestions, the film was put into production and evaluated after three months. Editor Kevin Nolting said that seven versions of the film were created before the production began. The filmmakers were responsible expressing the characters' personal traits, talents, and contrasts. Without Joy's annoyance, it was met with Docter's disappointment, whereas countless individuals were overjoyed. The film's design team researched more of her personality's distinct directions. Designer Albert Lozano wanted Joy with tomboyish and "mischievous" characteristics. After describing Joy as the most complex emotion, Amy Poehler helped the team to write her character, illustrating a broad range of happiness after facing difficulties. With LeFauve's help, the team envisioned Joy as vulnerable and intangible because she was "unapologetically positive". From the outset, the idea persisted about Joy's potential to excessively manipulate youth, setting off Riley's "social storms".

In one instance, Riley was to have wanted the lead role as a turkey in a Thanksgiving Day pageant. Ultimately, Docter found that plot idea to be too unfamiliar, and sought something to replace it. In October 2011, Diane Disney Miller convinced Docter to reduce the film's distractions and reprioritize the story. Docter determined that the concept of personality islands could integrate the mind world's geography and story. Several drafts emerged, each with different scenes to include the characters' ideas cultivated after they fell to "Idea Fields", and recruit Bing Bong to a large, exiled entourage from Riley's childhood. Richard Kind later defined his character as "the fading of childhood" when the film's development had progressed. The difficult part was to balance the film's tone, for example, how viewers would respond to Joy's cheerful nature while feeling negative about the mess that Joy manipulated in Riley. Rivera credited Poehler for fleshing out these aspects of Joy's nature. Eggleston recommended that the film be set to take place in the mind rather than in the brain, as such a few scenes about the brain were dropped.

An early version of Inside Out focused on Joy and Fear getting lost together. In July 2012, Pixar filmmakers held an evaluation screening of the film. Docter came to find that storyline non-functional, and was reluctant to be fired. In 2013, Docter was still unsure about what Joy had learned from Fear to develop her characterization, eventually reached a breakthrough to integrate emotions and relationships within the film. Storyboarding was reworked to replace Fear with Sadness and give Sadness a "much juicier" role.

Though the script of Inside Out was deemed ambitious and ingenious, screenwriter Michael Arndt spent a year on it before leaving the project in early 2011; he was attributed with additional story material. Over the course of storyboarding, 27 sequences and 178,128 outlines were developed, with 127,781 remaining upon completion. Initial storyboarding differentiated the importance of Riley's story arc than emotions, but Rivera considered the film's balance was "about 75 percent inside, 25 percent out". In early 2013, the filmmakers made seven to eight distinct openings for the film. After Cooley and Meg LeFauve contributed the film's rewrite, they were credited as screenwriters. Docter, Cooley, and LeFauve worked on experiences with raising their own children into the screenplay. Cooley highlighted these as emotions and subsequently created them.

Casting

As Inside Out contained several veterans of Saturday Night Live (SNL), the film's team spent a week at that program for research on a live television sequence. Poehler and Phyllis Smith had three voice recording sessions. Once Smith got a call for traveling to Pixar's headquarters in Emeryville, California, Rivera chose her after watching a lunch scene in Bad Teacher (2011). He contacted Docter and remarked, "I think we found our Sadness." Poehler was hired as the last of the emotions' cast.

Fear was inspired by Don Knotts. According to Lozano, Knotts had wide eyes. Docter said, "[He] was the kind of guy who could bring sophistication and then flip on a dime". Bill Hader was cast as Fear after he and the filmmakers visited the set of SNL in New York City for a week, and also assisted at the story room. His casting was assumed until his stay ended, but he asked to contact fellow SNL veteran Poehler that it was secret. Hader later reaffirmed his involvement in Inside Out. In all recording sessions, he instructed his screaming voice for his role of Fear.

When the story was pitched by Mindy Kaling, she said that it sounded "really beautiful" and joined the cast. Disgust was described as akin to the looks of April Ludgate and Veruca Salt. Docter exemplified Lewis Black for Anger, and was perfect for the role after the filmmakers kept him in mind as expected, having realized Black's voice. Kind was cast to voice Bing Bong, who tried to convey the same "sort of innocence" of his previous Pixar roles, and wound up not taking part in pre-release promotion as the producers decided to keep the character a secret.

Animation

Animation of Inside Out took a year and a half. About 48 animators (including supervisors Shawn Krause and Victor Navone, and director Jamie Roe), and 350 artists (35 of them lighting–led by cinematographer Kim White–and 10 layout) and technicians were involved in the production of the film. Two other animation teams were also produced: one was separate for abstract sequence and another was crowded for the character process. Docter imagined that with emotions for characters, they could "push the level of caricature" to both design and "style of movement" to degrees. To this end, they emulated the styles of animators Tex Avery and Chuck Jones. Docter informed Krause and Navone to push the graphic caricature of each character rather than sticking to the rigid behaviour of each RenderMan model. This required an artist to draw over characters in the film during dailies, using a Wacom Cintiq. The team spent over three years on enhancing the dinnertime scene, the first one to do so. Sketches resembled the emotions were superior by the filmmakers, despite the rules broke within such boundaries.

Through the simulation department, the motion of the characters' hair and their garments were added. Eggleston's production design arrived, moving forward for added placements that included their original inspiration for lighting Joy. His diagram made of pastels shaped her, considering that she had increased illumination. Created as a source of "particle simulation" by animators, each emotion had "sparkly" nature that were made out of energy and particles instead of solid forms. Pixar co-founder Edwin Catmull believed their characteristics have a lesser extent of humanoid forms, brighter colours, and strange shapes due to their possession of force fields. Rendering took 33 hours. All aspects of Inside Out were eventually merged to a single image.

For the character Joy to become brightened, the RenderMan team turned real light from a geometry, and Docter suggested to design her with "sprite-like and golden" modifications. The filmmakers worked for eight months on Joy's aura, but encountered difficulties related to time and budget; however, Lasseter requested that it be applied for each emotion. As Eggleston described it, "You could hear the core technical staff just hitting the ground, the budget falling through the roof". Docter and his six-designer team spent approximately 18 months finalizing Joy's look. Overall, the process on making Joy ran for three years.

Design and Cinematography

The characters in real world and design of Inside Out resembled Pixar films Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010). Navone described that as more natural; however, it was unsatisfactory, so he decided to tighten the aspects. The mind world's layout and cinematography took inspiration from Casablanca (1942). Pixar researched films within the Hollywood's golden age for set constructions. They do "moving master shots", combining them to one scene, the longest of which were 48 seconds or 1,200 frames. Art design of the film was intended to reflect 1950s Broadway musicals. In envisaging how the mind's interior would be depicted, the filmmakers concentrated on the word "electrochemical" and was considered for various options using electricity. The real world was emphasized by freeform techniques.

Director of photography Patrick Lin placed its camera language into mind and real worlds for determining and differentiating them; they were respectively described as superior and inferior. The real world had problems created through lens distortion and out-of-focus shots. Even so, directorial changes countered the camera's complex usage. Two types of camera lens (Arri/Zeiss Ultra Prime and Cooke S4), with distinct camera movements and predetermined paths, were used for both worlds. A purposeful and refined mechanical procedure using dolly, track, crane, and boom was used in the mind one; and biological cameras like zoom, Steadicam, and hand-held in the real one. Lin's crew supervised Riley's story arc as these cameras were applied in the film across three acts: first was Steadicam, followed by two were hand-held.

The use of scale progressions, which measured the worldbuilding size of the main characters, were made for handling the development of them and Riley and Joy's arcs. Staging was used for Inside Out's story, while framing for its theme. One of the film's parts was described as earliest and reserved, and had closeups for adults indicated for growing up, especially for Joy and Riley. The cameras were created by their crew have attached sensors and were "rough" and "physical"; these were improved in Inside Out after using them in Pixar's short film The Blue Umbrella (2013). Using the cameras for projecting the film's environment, they caused humans to surround it, which elaborated and incorporated its scenes. Layout supported Inside Out's virtual scenes, making them blocked and animated.

Music

Michael Giacchino served as composer for Inside Out. He began planning in January 2015. While in the music session, Docter felt its score "bittersweet" and "nostalgic" after he "grew up playing the violin and bass". Giacchino wanted to create something more emotionally monumental for Inside Out's score, which compared to his one from Up. The producers first met with Giacchino to discuss the film's concept and screen it for him. In response, he composed an eight-minute suite of music, unconnected to the film, based on his emotions viewing it. Rivera remarked that as both Giacchino and Docter were musicians, and they discussed the film in terms of story and character. In accordance with its creative preference, a progressive soundscape was made by sound designer Ren Klyce, who was joined by Rivera. Docter took a four-year discussion where his piano sessions considered forgetfulness, and a chewing gum advertising jingle was disturbing.

Themes and Analysis

Inside Out has been interpreted in many ways by different groups, including emotions and memories are portrayed. Ruth Bettelheim of USA Today wrote that physical and social environments had to evolve at years before being "artificially replicated". Primatologist Louise Barrett thought the synchronicity surrounded relatives, rendering at individuals' movements. Bettelheim emphasized these environments that individuals conveyed were disarranged at one another. Gestures were not meant to "mirror or respond to each other"; their immorality refused the emotions' understanding. According to USA Today's Jamie Altman, environmental changes were "difficult to overcome", which college students represented emotions like homesickness.

The core memories in the film allow Riley to recall previous experiences which control her emotions, and can allow "mental time travel". In the film, memories are shown as translucent globes that encapsulate its events, with a different hue depending on the mood of each memory. Natasha Moore of the Australian ABC News detailed that "as Riley's carefree life gets more complicated, Joy's attempts to deliver uninterrupted happiness become increasingly neurotic."

Another theme was forgetfulness, representing a "common but unsupported theory." The memories became "less colourful and more dim" which turn "dark and grey" due to the progressive age length and can not be recovered. Those were sent to "Memory Dump", where they turn to dust and disappear, which was corresponded to a "decay theory of forgetting," leading to a "permanent loss of information." Antonia Peacocke and Jackson Kernion of Vox mentioned that forgetfulness had records that did not "vanish into thin air at the bottom of your subconscious", and referring the theme sometimes as a "matter of letting a memory record fall into disuse, so much so that the neural pathway to that record gets lost." Emily Yoshida of The Verge described the character Bing Bong a "logical successor" to "forgotten, unloved toys" of the Toy Story franchise.

Release/Reception/Box Office

Disney spearheaded the marketing campaign. Their strategy entailed aggressive social media engagement, a worldwide publicity tour, and the creation of five colourful character posters. Leading up to its release, Inside Out was test screened for children, since executives were concerned at the film's complication to younger viewers. The 95-minute Inside Out debuted out of competition at the 68th Cannes Film Festival on May 18, 2015, followed by a premiere on June 16, at the El Capitan Theatre in Los Angeles. Inside Out was originally scheduled for general release on May 30, 2014, but it was pushed back to June 19, 2015. The film was also released in 3D and Dolby Cinema's Dolby Vision formats; it was one of the first films to be given such. In theatres, Inside Out was accompanied by a short film, Lava (2014).

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released Inside Out for digital download on October 13, 2015, and on Blu-ray and DVD on November 3. Physical copies contain behind-the-scenes featurettes, audio commentary, deleted scenes, and two shorts: Lava and Riley's First Date? (2015). In 2019, Inside Out was released on 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray.

Inside Out has an approval rating of 98% based on 379 professional reviews on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 8.9/10. Its critical consensus reads, "Inventive, gorgeously animated, and powerfully moving, Inside Out is another outstanding addition to the Pixar library of modern animated classics." Metacritic (which uses a weighted average) assigned Inside Out a score of 94 out of 100 based on 55 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A" on an A+ to F scale. Before the release of Inside Out, fans and critics were concerned by a perceived overdependence on sequels on the part of Pixar, which was only exacerbated by the announcement of Toy Story 4 (2019), and their films declining in quality. Likewise, DreamWorks Animation's competition with Pixar was disappointingly lacking, leading to speculation that computer-animated films were "in a funk".

Several journalists praised Inside Out for its craftsmanship, which they saw as an exercise of Docter's expertise, as the film was considered a return of Pixar's form by numerous critics. Peter Debruge (Variety), Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times), and Todd McCarthy (The Hollywood Reporter) praised the film. Debruge and Turan described it as the best, with his and McCarthy's evaluations were meant "sophisticated" and "audacious". Turan and Richard Brody (The New Yorker) cited the film's engaging visuals, responsibility to emotions, characterization of solutions, and narrow aspects of Riley's imagination; Debruge and Anthony Lane (The New Yorker) encouraged its originality. Vulture's David Edelstein suggested them that the film made a "new pop-culture touchstone". Despite these overall reviews, The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw and Slant Magazine writer Christopher Gray assessed the film as slightly inferior to Pixar's best.

The scriptwriting, plot, and subject matter were sources of praise. Forbes's Scott Mendelson thought that its qualities of narration provided a purpose, whereas Leigh Singer of IGN conveyed the film's tropes: child devotion, teamwork, and confused chases. Singer expressed the "tried-and-tested" journey had an unprecedented "licence to go". However, Rene Rodriguez, writing for the Miami Herald, expressed concern over the film's plot. Rodriguez cited its aspects, including its story skipping from the beginning to the end, and events involving inside Riley's head having thin goals. Ann Hornaday (The Washington Post) and A. O. Scott (The New York Times) impacted its subject matter to be entertaining, and these were summarized for exemplifying mental health by Udhav Naig (The Hindu), the body language by Chase Magnett (ComicBook.com), and the human movements by Brian Truitt (USA Today) and Kurt Loder (Reason). On the other hand, Naig panned the film's misinterpretation of brain functions. Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com emphasized the film's script, which had clear connections to its aspects, that Joy's comprehension should "what things mean, and what the other emotions ought to 'do' for Riley".

Reviews for the actors' performances were very positive in the media, often singling out Poehler, Smith, Kind, and Black for further praise, with their work described as "wonderful" and "excellent". Edelstein laboriously commended Poehler's acting, indicating that she had "supernatural exuberance but the semi-tonal quavers of doubt that keep that from being cloying or cartoonish." Joy was viewed as a heartful character and Sadness was a superfluous disapproval to the "secret side" by Tim Grierson of Paste, whereas Vox's Alex Abad-Santos felt that because of its appealing voice cast. Magnett credited Grierson's examination that reached these roles to their extent with accommodation, and elaborated Anger was the "most perfect" one due to his routine having a culmination, having a "sense of humour and genuine care". While Seitz took Sadness to have more value of her contribution, others, such as Jessica Kiang (IndieWire) and Tasha Robinson (The Dissolve), cited character development as one of its strengths.

Inside Out was included in multiple best-of lists. It was listed on many critics' top ten lists in 2015, ranking fourth. The film appeared on professional rankings from BBC, The New York Times, Empire, and The Independent based on retrospective appraisal, as one of the greatest films of the twenty-first century. Inside Out appeared on several lists of the best films of the 2010s in 2019, by outlets including: IndieWire, The A.V. Club, The Independent, RogerEbert.com, /Film, Time Out London, GamesRadar+, and the Los Angeles Times. Several publications have listed it as one of the best animated films, including: Harper's Bazaar (2017), USA Today, Elle (both 2018), Rolling Stone (2019), Esquire (2020), Parade, Complex, Time Out New York, and Empire (all 2021). In December 2021, the film's screenplay was listed number 29 on the Writers Guild of America's "101 Greatest Screenplays of the 21st Century (So Far)".

Inside Out earned $356.9 million in the United States and Canada and $501.9 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $858.8 million. It was the seventh-highest-grossing film of 2015. Deadline Hollywood calculated the film's net profit as $279.51 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs; box office grosses and home media revenues placed it sixth on their list of 2015's "Most Valuable Blockbusters".

The film was released with Dope on June 19, 2015. Inside Out earned $34.3 million on its first day, including $3.7 million from Thursday night previews. The film debuted at second earning $90.4 million from 3,946 theatres (3,100 in 3D); it was the first for Pixar not to do so at first. Inside Out's successful opening was attributed to its Cannes premiere, CinemaCon and Fathom Events screenings, its critical reception, good word-of-mouth, and Father's Day weekend. Its second weekend earnings dropped by 42 percent to $52.1 million, and followed by another $29.8 million the third weekend. By July 19, the film's domestic earnings topped $300 million. Inside Out completed its theatrical run in the United States and Canada on December 10, 2015. In July 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic closing most theatres worldwide and limiting what films played, Inside Out returned to 442 theatres (mostly drive-ins) and earned $340,000.

Worldwide, Inside Out earned $40.3 million in its opening weekend in 37 markets. On its opening weekend elsewhere, the top countries were China ($11.7 million), the United Kingdom ($11.4 million), Mexico ($8.6 million), Russia and the CIS ($7.6 million), Italy ($7.4 million), Germany ($7.1 million), and South Korea ($5.2 million). In Russia, Inside Out was the first Pixar film to earn more than one billion rubbles. By September 20, 2015, the film's offshore gross had exceeded $408.8 million. As of December 2021, Its top international markets were the United Kingdom ($59.5 million), Japan ($32.9 million), South Korea ($32.7 million), Germany ($31.6 million), and France ($30.1 million).

Budget $175 million

Box office $858.8 million

My Review

One important note: If you go see "Inside Out" be sure to get there on time so that you can see the short that precedes it, "Lava". It's an amazing short film--one of the best CGI shorts I've ever seen. But, like "Inside Out", its audience really is adults, not kids.

This film appears to have been inspired by a now defunct but wonderful exhibit at Epcot at Disney World. Cranium Command was a strange movie which featured lots of film clips and audio animatronics to embody the various emotions battling within a young boy. Here in "Inside Out", you have a group of entities that also embody the feelings...but in a young girl. When the film focuses on these five emotions, it's at its best---clever, fun and often sweet and tender. Unfortunately, the film loses its way a bit in the middle--and seems to have succumbed to some distractions. Fortunately, it finds its way very well at the end-- and ending which is incredibly satisfying and perhaps might require some Kleenex.

The film is incredibly well animated and I was impressed by the 3-D version as it used this technology well. Additionally, the story is nothing like any CGI film I've ever seen. My only reservation is that the story might be a bit difficult for children to understand and the plot seems much more for older kids, teens and, especially, adults.

Most of Pixar's films are wonderful (short films too), and while the three films made after Toy Story 3 weren't up to their top standards they were still better than most animation companies at their worst. Inside Out was nothing short of a masterwork, Pixar's best since Toy Story 3 and one of their best overall.

Pixar films can be relied upon to have great animation, and Inside Out certainly does have great animation. No, wonderful animation and some of the company's most ingeniously inventive, with gorgeously vibrant colours, a very imaginatively rendered setting (and the lands even more ingeniously done, the next land more so than the last), very meticulous and beautifully modelled backgrounds and clever character designs that match the emotions more than ideally. Michael Giacchino's sparkling, rousing and very charming score is one of my personal favourite scores of the year so far, and every bit as great as his score for Up.

A superb job was done with the script here too, the comedy is clever and witty without ever being forced and balances subtly with the drama, the drama is some of the most truly poignant of any Pixar film and it doesn't ever feel manipulative or overdone and it's very smartly insightful. The story, not one of THE most innovative concepts but is one of the more imaginative uses of it and is quite original for Pixar actually, goes at a slightly steadier pace than other Disney films, but still captivated. It was very easy to completely connect with Riley and her situation and this was easily the Pixar film since Toy Story 3 that I connected with emotionally the most, also one of Pixar's most moving stories quite easily.

Loved the characters too, Anger, Fear, Disgust and Bing Bong (the imaginary friend and the 'epitome of immaturity', without ever being annoying, his back story did bring a tear to the eye) stole every scene they were in, and even Sadness managed to crack some funny one-liners even in her depressive state. Joy also positively lights up the screen and Riley was easy to connect with and much more than just a stereotypical teen girl. The voice acting is splendid. Amy Poehler is note perfect as Joy with her spirited banter giving the character so much life while also bringing a human element to her as well, Lewis Black gives an explosively barn-storming turn as Anger, Phyllis Smith is amusing and affecting, Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling are similarly priceless and in a way that makes the characters of Fear and Disgust endearing rather than annoying, Richard Kind is innocently charming and Kyle MacLachlan and Diane Lane are appropriately compassionate.

Overall, a masterful return to form for Pixar. It's their best since Toy Story 3 and one of their best overall as well. 8.6/10