Slightly grim, slightly funny

Rating: 7/10 (22 February 2016)

A young girl's emotions set out on a rescue mission when she becomes increasingly sad following her family's move to the big city to start a new life.
Disney brings the concept of the Numskulls to a new level. The animation explores a sometimes nightmarish world, where a simplified set of emotions is personified in a team of bumbling characters that negotiates a landscape of threatening imagination and cold, industrialised memory processes.
The pace is pretty good, with an escalating roller-coaster ride of challenges and defeats as the emotions struggle to restore the girl to her vibrant happy self, only to find another self is emerging. This kept veering into a darker narrative, and I guess the writers constantly had to push back into more wholesome territory with the girl's personal story overwhelmed by the more hectic experiences of team emotion.
Editing and performances are good, and the music hardly noticeable. Some decent laughs, but nothing great. Best scene is in the memory dump.
Overall, good and imaginative with a satisfying ending, but the plot maybe lacks a bit of drive as the link between the trauma of the move and the growing sadness lacks some truth and difficulty. I suppose this comes through in the upbeat preachiness and downbeat interference, respectively, of the characters Joy and Sadness.