Grade: A-

Rating: 8/10 (20 July 2015)

When I first heard the concept of Inside Out, it didn't make any sense to me; it just didn't sound like anything that could be made into a film. The early trailer showed that the execution would be possible with the emotions being represented by different characters. Walking into the movie theater though, the doubt came back. How on Earth do you make a movie about characters that are designed to be one- note?
As soon as Joy, voiced by Amy Poehler, came on screen, my confidence was restored. Her uplifting personality, though it could have been an obnoxious comedy device, instead allows the audience to view life with a sense of awe that only a child can experience. Vicariously, the audience is able to revisit childhood literally through the lens of a girl through which we see the world. But Joy is not the only emotion inside her.
Soon Fear (voiced hilariously by Bill Hader) joins in, and then Anger (voiced by scene-stealer Lewis Black), and Disgust (a rather forgettable character and odd choice for a primary emotion, voiced by Mindy Kaling), and Sadness are part of the group that controls how this young girl sees the world. Sadness appears to be the antagonist- though she is funny, all the memories stored inside that she touches become sad memories, and she can't seem to help herself.
In an attempt to save an important memory, Sadness and Joy get lost inside the girl's mind, leaving the controls to Anger, Fear and Disgust, and these characters manipulate this girl during a critical event in her life, and everything seems to fall apart. For every step forward Sadness and Joy take, they fall two steps back.
The way that Disney/Pixar presents the different aspects of the mind are hilarious, clever, and easy to understand (ex: two boxes of facts and opinions, respectively, fall to the floor, and without sorting through them, they throw facts and opinions back into the boxes, mixing the two up). A hilarious running gag throughout the film about a catchy jingle makes for many laughs throughout. The film toys with abstract concepts and delivers one of the weirdest scenes in a Disney/Pixar movie. And the addition of a former imaginary friend, voiced delightfully by Richard Kind, provides both laughs and many heartfelt moments of forgotten childhood.
As funny and original as I found Inside Out to be, I couldn't help but feel the movie tugging too hard at the heartstrings. Too many times did a character pick up a memory and look on it fondly with tears in their eyes; too many times did a character make progress, only to be shot across the girl's mind somewhere further from their destination. Instead of feeling sad, like it was clearly intended, I felt frustrated. And while the movie was filled with genuine, heartbreaking emotion, it tried just a few too many times to make me feel nostalgic. Children may find the movie either too serious or too sad, and adults may find it too deliberate and manipulative.
Despite this, Inside Out is far from being a failure. While very little actually happens in the outside world in regards to plot, the weight of the actions that do happen are felt so much more because we understand the complicated emotions under the surface. Inside Out is the type of movie that shouldn't work; one-note characters that state exactly what the character is feeling and why, and yet, it's pulled off with this effortless magic that only Disney/Pixar seems to be able to achieve in a decade that's been slightly less fruitful than the past two for the company. The movie not only overcomes the obstacles inherently built into the script, but it transcends the problem of one-note characters and gives more character dimension than most films. Inside Out is arguably the best Disney/Pixar movie since Toy Story 3.
Grade: A-