It’s remarkable how Pixar continues to top themselves in the arena of family entertainment that’s artistic, pleasing, and so multifaceted. “Inside Out” is that rare family film that demonstrates originality by appealing to its audience and tries to understand the experience of being a child in the modern age, rather than condescend or berate. “Inside Out” is one of Pixar’s greatest films to date; its complex, it’s heartbreaking, it’s sweet, and damn it, it should go down in the annals of animated Disney masterpieces.
“Inside Out” doesn’t just strive to entertain, but provide insight in to our own emotions and imaginations painting every single impulse and thought we have as important and crucial to the people we become. It’s a coming of age tale, sure, but every person could relate to what emotions are felt during certain periods of life that involve anger, joy, sadness, fear, and disgust. “Inside Out” looks like it has simplified intricate human feelings, but in reality it takes those core emotions and paints them as their own individual personas with wants, needs, and desires. They’re expressions of our core that require care and nurturing, and the environment we inhabit triggers those impulses time and time again in to the very unique machine that is the human consciousness.
More so, the film relies on a premise that brings to the table an important mission: Saving the life of a young girl whose entire fate will be decided if joy and sadness are forever lost in the inner recesses of young Riley’s mind. She’s at the age where her adulthood is being decided though various events. Things take a turn for the worse when her dominant persona, Joy, is sucked in to a tube with Sadness and lost in Riley’s mind. Through that, Riley begins experiencing very serious depression which doesn’t improve considering she is uprooted to San Francisco with her parents, and away from her friends. “Inside Out” makes it very clear that every part of us is important and a necessary to our growth as empathetic beings. Especially Sadness who helps offer Riley a sense of caution and humanity. At first Sadness begins tinkering with Riley’s core emotions turning nostalgia in to mourning, but soon the audience begins to realize that sadness serves a purpose.
Even Joy, who leads the charge back to headquarters to guide Riley back to her former self, realizes that every emotion has its point in our world, and keeps us whole every single day. Pixar’s film is wide in scope, and even wider in vision, providing a unique and amazing world within Riley’s mind that works in mysterious and unusual ways. From abstract thought, to that stupid commercial jingle that won’t leave our heads, every facet serves some kind of purpose. Mid-way there’s the introduction of Riley’s lost imaginary friend Bing Bong, and surely enough Pixar does a bang up job of making us feel for what could have been an obnoxious addition to an already complete film. Richard Kind’s performance is stunning enough, but the way the writers convey the importance of Bing Bong will provide audiences with laughter, and surely a lot of tears and heartache.
“Inside Out” is not just a wonderful film; it will be an important film. It’s one that seeks to understand its audience, while helping us look in to our own minds and realize that deep down we’re all beings with the same core emotions, and we’re all weathering life as best as we can. Every emotion is important and we should learn to embrace them all. Pete Docter concocts an animated vision that’s bold, brilliant, and will be discussed for years.