Inside Out: Mind over Matters

5 out of 5 Popcorn Kernels

Pixar has done it again (just when I didn't think they could after...dare I say it...Cars 2), with a moving and touching animated feature, which I believe, is their most complicated one to date. It is an amusing fairy tale for the children, and a deep (often funny) lesson on the human condition for adults. It does all this wrapped in color and cotton candy, while giving a rather diverse pallet of characters that we all can relate to.

In and Out is about emotions. It is also about family, growing up, and the bridge between childhood and adulthood. When I first heard of this concept, I could not thing how it could be pulled off; to have a movie depict a young girl's emotions as separate characters within her head, who acted on their own, but also made up the whole of the girl...I was like..Riiiiiiiiiiiight! Not gonna happen! But Disney has put there pixels where their mouth is, and created Inside Out, which may be their best work yet.

Inside Out is the story of a little 11-year old girl named Riley (Kaitlyn Dias), who has moved from Minnesota to San Francisco because of her father's job. This causes big changes to her socially, having to leave her friends, school, and her hobby of ice hockey behind. It is also a big change for her emotionally, which is the basis for the movie, for within Riley's brain are the 5 major emotions that make up her personality.

The first one came at birth, setting up a control panel, who is colored a sun-shiny yellow, named Joy (Amy Poehler). Joy made Riley giggle when she was a newborn when she gazed upon her parents for the first time. For a few fleeting seconds, Joy was...well...joyful, and was not only enjoying Riley and her birth, but also herself and her surroundings, seeing that she too was newly born herself.

Then Riley got hungry.

And in stepped Sadness (Phyllis Smith), with her downtrodden blue color, and pageboy haircut. She came to the control panel to display the sadness that Riley was feeling at that moment. And so it continued, with the introduction of other emotions that Riley was soon to be feeling, like her dislike of vegetables controlled by the green Disgust (Mindy Kaling), or the purple Fear (Bill Hader), or the red Anger (Lewis Black). All these emotions made up what Riley was feeling, based upon the situation she was in.

These situations became a part of Riley's growing memory, and those memories were represented as small spheres, which contained the color that was dominant within that memory. And as a child, there was a lot of yellow spheres covering the wall in her shelf-like housing to represent the joy in Riley's life. But something happened when she moved. There was a disruption of the normal things in her life, and she realized she was on her own in a sense, and the emotions in her head were going back and forth, each trying to take control, each trying to find a way back to peace...to Joy.


From the headquarters of her emotions, there are several bridges that lead to "islands" that make up Riley's personality. There is the island of her Family, and one of her Friends, and her Activities/Hockey...and so on. They remained healthy entities, as long as Riley's emotions were in check. But there is suddenly a more dominant emotion that is starting to wander towards the controls, who wants to be noticed, who is touching the beautiful yellow memories, and tainting them, and that emotion is Sadness, and Joy is not understanding. So in Riley's mind, the characters of Joy and Sadness are having a tough time dealing with each other (and it shows in Riley at school and at home) and through a small exchange, they suddenly find themselves ripped from Riley's mind, leaving only Distrust, Anger, and Fear in control. In a little girl, whose mind has not dealt with her darker emotions, to have them at the forefront of her thinking, is not a good thing. So it stands to reason, that Joy and Sadness need to find a way back home to headquarters.

And so the adventure begins, where we begin to explore other realms of Riley's brain, because in the absence of Joy and Sadness, she is losing a grip on her friends, family, and other islands that make up her personality. They begin to crumble and fall into a pit that will make up her core, lost forever. And it is this aspect of In and Out that becomes the most amazing new world I have seen fleshed out in an animated story. Along the way we visit the parents, and enter their mind as well, and see how they think. My only question was the gender-specific nature of the parents emotions as opposed to Riley's, who only had 3 women emotions, and 2 male - did this mean that Riley would have gender-identification issues when she got older? How interesting and un-Disney that would be...but we know that animation hasn't become THAT progressive (Riley after all, can be a gender-neutral name).

Peter Docter is a great director (UP, Toy Story 3), and knows how to pull the emotional heartstrings by exposing the emotions and feelings that we all share. He also has created a very well, thought out environment; with long-term memory being represented by rows and rows of spheres, that are being pulled and discarded by other characters. These spheres go into the pit, for they are memories that are forgotten, replaced by others as she grows older. We even meet a wonderful character known as Bing Bong (a combination of many zoo animals), who was Riley's childhood imaginary friend. He wanders her mind, hoping to one day be remembered, and not end up in the pit that contains her core emotions...lost and forgotten forever.

The time with Bing Bong is the peak of animation wonder from Pixar. This journey is not only touching, but it exhibits the best talent in animation I have seen from them, especially when they decide to take a short cut to catch Riley's train-of-thought. The urgency, and the animation that happens there was mind blowing to me, and it had me on the edge of my seat. I was also impressed with the diversity of the scenes as well. In a classroom sceen, I was amazed at how diverse the class was...I don't think Disney has every used this many colors from their paint pallet.

With In and Out, it was fascinating to watch the emotions learn not only from Riley, while protecting her, but to also learn from themselves. The road from adolescent to teenager is a tough one, and they are all learning to deal with the transition. These emotions guide us in our everyday lives, and affect the lives around us for the rest of our individual lives. It is nice to see a movie that speaks not only to us, but also to what makes us...us.

P.S. watch the end credits for insides to other creatures and people within Pixar-land...very funny.